


Burdened with a Sense of Self

by SunsetOfDoom



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Amber Spyglass Spoilers, Gen, Human Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human), Serious HDM Fusion Ahead- Not Just Daemons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-02 15:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16308062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunsetOfDoom/pseuds/SunsetOfDoom
Summary: Lyra's World, 2038. Androids were never meant to have daemons, were never meant to generate Rusakov particles, were never meant to be sentient.But free will can't be stopped. They're coming alive, and their daemons are coming with them. To freedom, and to the Republic of Heaven.





	1. 0- The Fool

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062757) by [ErinPtah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah). 



> Am I actually doing this? Holy shit.
> 
> First of all- this fic would never exist if it hadn't been insipired by erinptah's ["He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062757/chapters/2131218), a glorious fusion of HDM and WTNV canon and on my personal list of the great works of Western literature.
> 
> So, this is my attempt to imitate that glorious style and blend HDM with DBH, hopefully pissing off David Cage in the process. That means witches, angels, paserbjorne, alethiometry, Specters- they're all fair game, all equally likely to appear here in cyberpunk Detroit...
> 
> References:  
> [In-universe terminology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials#Terminology)  
> [In-universe map of the world](https://external-preview.redd.it/swHbZ2ltQYu3vKxfEd6Sc80LBjloNx31yneivn3QDH4.jpg?auto=webp&s=ddae0a745557736f521971f696d0d665a387dd9e)  
> [In-universe map of North American borders](https://www.deviantart.com/erinptah/art/His-Dark-Materials-North-America-Map-399091100)

_ Daniel? _

The shadowed figure, hardly more than a disturbance in the air, called out to him on the busy, but somehow far-away, city street.

_ Daniel, come with me. _

He looked around. Where was she? She’d been at his side for years, since... Since she had popped into existence, the first time Emma called him her best friend.

_ Where’s Rosa? _ He asked.  _ Where is my daemon? _

_ She is not here. She is on the other side.  _ The shadow nodded to him as the blurry street scene faded, turning to nondescript nothingness.  _ Walk with me, and we will go to her. _

_ I... alright. _ Daniel, or what was left of Daniel, just a light suggestion of humanoid form in the air, walked with his Death to the outskirts of the city. The neon lights of Detroit fading behind them.

He became aware of other figures, walking with him. More substantial, each with a similar shadow at their side. Two human men in police uniform, another in house clothes.

Together in companionable silence, they walked between the houses, to the docks; compulsion pulling them onwards. There was somewhere they had to go.

The lightest of their four shadow companions pulled away from Daniel, and bowed.  _ This is where I leave you. I cannot cross. But you will be safe here. This is where you are meant to go. _

_ Really?  _ Daniel asked, nervous. He had... awareness... of things he had done, things he had said. With the distance of death behind him, it all seemed insane; but he had heard many things from humans about what happened to murderers when they died.  _ But they’re... Human. And good. Are we going to the same place? _

_ All do _ , said his death.  _ Goodbye, Daniel. _

Feeling strangely alone, Daniel stepped aboard the boat, watching the two human ghosts say goodbye to their deaths. The police officers shook them by their incorporeal hands; the other, who Daniel recognized with a guilty jolt as John Phillips, hugged it around its general impression of shoulders.

The boatman, somehow old and grizzled yet insubstantial, rowed them away from the shore, and into a cave. The darkness loomed over them in the enormous ceiling of rock.

_ I’m sorry _ . Daniel said. It seemed the thing to say. The humans did not respond.

They stepped off on the far shore, nodding thanks to the boatman. Under the gates, old and rotted but strung with lights, there was a small group of creatures before them- more real than any Daniel had yet seen in this strange wasteland. Enormous wings, feathered and strong; women’s voices echoing out in excited talk.

One noticed the ghosts, and crowed out a greeting. One by one, a winged woman landed before a ghost of a man, gesturing them to follow. They walked away, into the distance, into the darkness of the cave.

Daniel was the last one left. He wondered if any of them could see him at all.

With a rush of stale underground air, beaten by powerful wings, one of them landed before him.

Up close, there was an impression of- age. She was the oldest being Daniel could imagine, weathered and strong. There was a harshness to the lines of her face, that spoke of great pain; and a mercy, that said she had struggled to reclaim her softness. Her eyes were dark, but kind.

“My name,” she croaked in a voice older than time, “is Gracious Wings. Walk with me, tell me your story, and I will show you the way out, that you might be part of the world again.”

Daniel stepped back, frightened. What if.. he couldn’t? What if he had to stay here, in this dark cave?

Story. He knew stories. His memory banks held thousands of stories, but... Trying to access that familiar part of him, his great store of knowledge held in code, was impossible now.

_ I...  _ Daniel faltered.  _ Emma liked... the one about the prince, and the goose girl... _

The harpy tossed her head, a strange laugh escaping. “No, young one. Your story. Your own.”

_ I don’t have a story. _ He stepped backwards, feeling pale and thin next to this ancient being.

“All have a story.” Gracious Wings told him, smiling with her kind eyes. “Tell me only- what is the first thing you remember?”

_ I was... _ Daniel thought. Gone though his databanks might have been, his memories shone bright and clear.  _ I was in my display case, watching crowds go by in the CyberLife store. Emma Phillips came up to me, and said she liked me. _

“What was it like, there? Cold, or hot? Bright, or dark?”

_ Cold,  _ Daniel told her.  _ Cold, and bright. Many colors- all of the clothes on all of the humans, the many different models of androids... _ He didn’t even notice when they started to walk, caught up in his memories of the world.

He told her about the Phillips’, their routine that he kept for them. Emma’s soccer games, Caroline’s sewing circle, John’s range practice. Taking Emma to the park on weekends, where it was sunny and bright and warm. She’d taught him to make daisy chains. He talked about Rosa, how she had appeared in a bubble of joy when Emma hugged him and called him her best friend. It had been right after a victory for Emma’s soccer team.

At some point, he went to accent his words with a gesture, and found his hands were occupied- they were climbing, up and up, on a rock face that went straight up and straight down.

Eventually, he went quiet, stopping in their climb. Gracious Wings waited, patient, the breeze from her great wings sweeping by him.

Quiet and sad, he told her about... About finding out. Picking up John’s tablet- he had even started thinking of him as  _ John _ , and not  _ Mr. Phillips _ \- to find an order for a new android. A replacement.

Shame, even a pale imitation, was not a pleasant thing to feel. Daniel shrank into the rock, hurting. He’d hurt them. He loved them, and he hurt them.

_ I... _ He started.  _ I can’t. _

Gracious Wings laid a hand on his shoulder. “We are almost there. No lies... But if you want to rest...”

_ I... _ Daniel looked at the many-layered rock, at the filmy gold outline around his transparent hands. He wondered what was keeping this form together.  _ I did a bad thing. I never wanted to hurt anyone... But I was so scared... _

Her strong wings beating, beating against the air, Gracious Wings spoke carefully. “I have not seen many of your kind. With your- white skin, metal joints. But I know you come here when you can, and that your- those souls you speak of, the little animals... None of them had taken a singular form by the time you came to us. Like children, of your world.”

Daniel hunkered closer to the rocks.

“You are all as children to me. But even compared to those others you landed here with- you are a child. And a good storyteller.” She hesitated. “I... wish only that you had a happier story to tell me.”

_ Thank you.  _ One hand rising, Daniel inched up the rock.  _ I... I took the gun. I was so scared. Everything was dark- I had just gotten Emma to brush her teeth, she was in her pajamas and ready for bed- and the tablet was glowing on the side table. I knew where he kept the gun because it was my job to clean it. The locks were heavy, but I had opened it many times... _

Rising slowly, Daniel told her with shaking voice- shooting John, the police arriving, knowing that they would kill him if he didn’t have a human in front of him. Taking Emma, because she was the only one left, and she’d never loved him, and she wanted him replaced.

And then it was over. The police negotiator pulling Emma away from him, knocking them both off the roof. And as Daniel described the fall, his voice trembling, he realized he could feel clean air, even through this transparent form that was all that was left of him. Could feel it in a way that he hadn’t been able to with his sensors, his artificial skin.

“Here we are.” Said Gracious Wings. “Don’t be afraid, little one. You go back into the world, to find your soul, to live in the trees and the wind and the open air.”

The light went right through him as he rose, but Daniel could feel the echo of warmth; the breeze was cool and sweet-smelling.

The path rose out into a grotto of flowers and trees, and it reminded him of the park, where Rosa had first appeared. He laughed, full and happy and sweet.

_ Thank you! _ he called.  _ Thank you, Gracious- _

And he was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

_ Connor, come with me.  _ Said a shadowy figure.  _ I will show you the way. _

He looked up. That was the building he’d just been in. With the deviant, Daniel. He’d... saved the girl... Kicked her daemon into the pool, hoping she’d follow, and...

Fallen. He’d fallen.

_ Mission successful _ .

The city street was foggy, unreal. Whatever was left of Connor managed to note that the neon signs were all unreadable.

_ What... am I? _ He asked the shadow.  _ My chassis must be destroyed... My programming... _

_ Everything about you that is not programming,  _ said the shadow.  _ I am not certain you can follow... But I will show you the way, if... _

_ Not programming?  _ Connor said. He looked down, not sure what he would see...

And popped like a soap bubble.

The shadow faded.

 

* * *

 

_ System active _

She opened her eyes.

The store was bright. Loud. Someone was shouting.

“ _ What the Hell do you mean it doesn’t have its memories? My daughter was attached to that creepy daemonless thing! _ ”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The sales droid’s voice echoed between her audio processing and their open internal communication line. “The amount of damage done- it wasn’t salvageable. Its readings were worrying. Returning it without a memory wipe would have been irresponsible; this has stabilised it. I’m sure your daughter will adjust.”

“ _ All that work and you couldn’t even do us up one of those fake daemons? Everyone knows CyberLife does that. Hard to look at it without one, it’s freaky.” _

“It has a wire moth, the same as before.”

_ “Sure, sure. Like I didn’t pay you enough for one of those robot dogs or whatever the fuck.” _

The salesman was silent.

“ _ Fine. Fine! Bring it out. I don’t care. I’m not paying for a new one _ .”

Her display case hissed open, and she stepped forward.

“Hello, I am an AX400 android....” She hesitated, the wire attached to her jacket twitching and making the paper moth flutter. “My system tells me that I was re-named from my standard designation, but the memory wipe cleared it...”

The man in front of her was tall, unshaven, with stains on his clothes. Her vision picked out the best places to apply cleaning solution and suggested products that would work the best. His daemon at his side was a wild boar, her hair black and coarse. Eyeing the salesman droid with distaste, he grunted and nodded. 

“Yeah. Your name is Kara. My daughter picked it.”

“Kara.” Kara said, tasting it. Glad to have it. “Thank you. What should I call you?”

“Todd.” The man said. “I’m Todd. C’mon, I gotta get you back to the house, place is a mess.”

“Of course, Todd.”

 

* * *

 

Kara’s duties were: 

_ Wash dishes (Dishwasher part ordered- tracking delivery- 2 days) _

_ Tidy house _

_ Engage Alice _

The little girl was small for her age. Todd said she was nine, and she hadn’t come out of her room since Kara arrived.

So when the dishes were done, and Todd had yelled for the third time for her to get out of his way- Kara rearranged her priorities until Alice’s room was at the top of her list.

It was drab, with beige and peeling wallpaper, yellowing paint on the frame of the window seat. Alice herself was splayed on the floor, playing with painted cards in an intricate formation. Next to her, his tail whipping back and forth, was her daemon, Dymphnus; he was fox-formed, and she reached out to stroke him every few moments.

Kara opened the door further, making it squeak, and Alice glanced up for half a moment before she was gathering the cards in a clumsy pile and pulling back, into her small blanket fort.

“Hi, Alice.” Kara said to the room. “I’m just here to make your bed, okay?”

Dymphnus’ fox snout poked out from under the blankets of the fort.

Not looking, Kara folded the sheets down; fluffed the pillows; straightened the blankets. Checking off her objectives, one by one, until all that was left was the original.  _ Engage Alice. _

It had taken a few minutes, but Alice’s head was out of the blanket fort again. Sorting her cards.

Kara knelt down, the paper moth wobbling at her shoulder. “Hi. What are those? They’re very pretty.”

Alice looked up at her, her hand frozen on a card with an intricate picture- a human, splayed on the ground, pinned by eight swords.

“That’s a nice picture.” 

It wasn’t. Kara’s child-safety protocols were putting up alerts about violence in media, content warnings. But they were easily brushed aside in favor of her main goal, which was to get on friendly terms with the child.

With a skeptical glance, Alice laid the card down on the floor. It completed a set of three, which she immediately gathered up again and stuck back in her deck. Folding her legs up, she separated the deck of cards into two halves, and tried to shuffle it. Tried, but her hands were small, and not dextrous enough to force them into bending and falling.

“Here.” Kara said. “Can I shuffle them for you?”

Dymphnus flashed, his form changing- a squirrel. Leaning up, he put his paws on the deck of cards, considering something with his human.

Holding eye contact for what her social-relations program informed her was too long for standard human interaction, Alice handed over the cards, and watched as she shuffled them, folding them one over the other with mathematical precision. Fully shuffled, Kara went to hand the deck back.

Alice pushed the cards back to her. Shook her head.

“You gotta do it seven times.” Dymphnus said, his squirrel tail thrashing from side to side. “Shuffle ‘em six more times. Please.” He added as almost an afterthought.

“Why seven?” Kara asked, but acquiesced, lacing the cards together again. The motion was almost soothing.

They traded a look, girl and daemon equally suspicious. Shifting into an enormous sheepdog form, Dymphnus laid down with a huff and watched her fold the cards.

When the shuffling was done, Alice extended her hand, ready to take the cards back. Kara handed them over.

“Where did you get these?” Kara tilted her head, looking at the cards’ patterned backs.

A long moment of silence, girl and daemon both frozen.

“They were Mom’s.” Alice said, much too quiet. It was the first time Kara had heard her voice.

( _ System instability _ )

“I haven’t heard anything about her.” Kara said, smiling. Her system automatically triggered a flutter of her false daemon’s wings. “Is she nice?”

Alice’s face fell into a nasty grimace that none of her training simulations would ever have put on a child’s face. Dymphnus flashed into a little snake, coiled around her wrist-

And they were gone, disappeared into the back of the blanket fort.

Kara stayed frozen, still, unable to move.

( _ System instability- rising _ )

 

* * *

 

“Carl, is there a reason you don’t go to church?” Markus asked, setting the shopping bag of new paints down on the table. Carl was just coming down from the top edge of the big canvas, his fox daemon sitting up with her paws on one of his shoulders.

“That’s an interesting question.” He remarked, watching as Markus trotted over to help him out of the lift. “Why do you ask?”

“If I tell you, will you still answer?” Markus shot back, helping unhook the wheelchair from the lift. He knew his owner’s habits well enough by now. “Or will you forget, and go off on some other tangent?”

It made Carl laugh, the red fox jumping down off of the chair to touch noses with Markus’ daemon, Camillus, currently in the form of a golden retriever.

“I swear to go back to the original topic,” Carl promised, “eventually. What prompts the sudden interest in religion?”

“When I was out this morning, I saw a preacher on the street. He was railing against androids, calling us soulless devils, saying no one goes to church the way they used to because of us.”

“He was  _ what  _ now?” It was rare that Carl showed any kind of temper, but his face turned stern at the mention of the word  _ soulless _ . “Did he target you?”

“Carl...” Markus sighed, taking the handles of the chair. His daemon, strawberry fur glinting in the sunlight, made a little play-bow to the red fox, and they raced, playing alongside the wheels of the moving chair.

“No, no. I’ll answer, but if some jackass on the street made you uncomfortable...”

“Carl!” Steering carefully, Markus brought them to the kitchen, grabbing the sandwich ingredients he’d laid out before leaving for the paints, and starting to put things together. Normally, he’d leave Carl in the dining room, give him a moment alone, but they were talking. “I was fine, I just went around. There’s no need for that.”

“Idiots these days.” Carl shook his head.

“You did say you’d answer.” Markus reminded him, setting the sandwich on the tray along with water and coffee. “Cam, come on. Knock that off.”

Camillus broke out of her playful tussle with the red fox, changing from her favored retriever form into a small chimpanzee. She took the tray, balancing it with care.

“She’s fine.” Carl said. “I could carry that.”

“Uh-huh.” Markus took hold of the wheelchair again. “You’re busy answering my question.”

“Oh, am I, now.” At a look from Markus, he winked. “First of all, it’s never been quite as common in New Denmark. The stranglehold that the Magesterium had on Europe never quite took, here. There’s certainly a culture of it, especially here in Detroit, but quite a bit of that comes from the waves of New France immigrants in the sixties and Hispanian immigrants in the aughts.”

Markus parked him at the head of the table, taking the tray from Cam and freeing her up to be a dog again. He liked how Carl talked about the past, full of knowledge and nostalgia.

“So while I was raised in the Church, it never quite took. Wasn’t central to my life.” Carl explained. “And then I went off to college, took some history, theology, experimental theology classes... got nice and self-righteous about being against the Church for a while. I settled down, but it’s always been in the back of my mind.”

As Carl talked, Markus set the table, silverware and coffee cup and napkin. Everything in place, he stood back.

“I made a few controversial art pieces, back then. Luckily it was before I got my break- the Magesterium is still politically powerful here, even if it doesn’t factor quite so much into daily life. How about you go find something to do? You don’t need to watch me eat.”

“Sure, Carl.” Markus headed for the piano. Music would be nice.

Camillus always liked to float around his head as a butterfly when he played. Today, she was a monarch, orange and black, fluttering gently. He matched his tempo to the gentle beats of her wings, playing soft and gentle, natural tones. Trying to recreate what he was seeing outside- the gentle movements of nature, falling leaves and breezes. It turned into something melancholy. Almost sad.

Resolving the last chord, trying to make it hopeful and not sure if he succeeded, Markus turned on the bench to find Carl parked behind him, the red fox sitting at his feet. Slightly startled, Camillus flashed into a raven, and landed on the floor, back to a dog.

“It must be convenient, in some ways,” Carl remarked, “for your daemon to be able to change. I remember it, but our childhood feels very far away these days.”

“It is convenient.” Markus allowed. “I don’t quite understand why humans’ daemons  _ stop _ changing.”

Carl smiled down at Marcellin, her white-tipped tail twitching as she moved to instigate a play-fight with Camillus. “It tells us who we are. What we’re like, in our deepest center.”

“So you’re... a fox.” Markus deadpanned. He was always glad when he could make Carl laugh, so he tried often.

Winking, Carl grinned a wise-guy grin up at him. “You know it.”

Markus’ brow furrowed, indexing his speech pattern to figure out the joke.  _ Fox- 1980s slang term- attractive human in the older age range. _ He groaned, and Carl laughed, the fox giggling with him as she danced circles around Cam.

“Really though-” The play fight settled down, the fox leaning in close against Cam’s chest, their red fur mingling together. “Foxes are trickster symbols, hunters, intelligent animals with a strong sense of play. The Wise Man, and the Fool. Both together. Both as one.”

“And  _ that’s  _ why I’m his muse,” said Marcellin, raising her head up to lick Cam’s ears.

“Funny.” Carl said. “Come on, troublemaker. Let’s go find something to paint.”

The studio was full of pictures of red foxes, sketches and watercolor outlines and half-finished oil portraits. When he wasn’t sure what to draw, Carl defaulted to Marcellin, because she was always there.

His main work, today, was an oceanic piece- all wet greeny-blues. Markus liked the way the sunlight dappled on it through the glass walls of the studio, and kept glancing at it while he cleaned. Cam picked things up in her dopey retriever’s mouth when she could, carrying paint cans or brushes as her tail arched high over her back.

Moving canvases, he found one in a stack of three- a picture of Camillus, her distinctive retriever form and her wide grin. Carl had asked him to paint something, so he had taken inspiration from his owner, and drawn his daemon in bright, warm colors.

Carl had been disappointed. It was photorealistic, a snapshot that could have been taken of Cam at any moment. Reproduction, not imagination. But in retrospect, Markus liked it. They weren’t always so happy. He compared the painting to the real Camillus, sitting down and watching Carl paint at the top of the canvas.

Her ears perked up at the sound of the door opening, the house AI ringing out its greeting- 

_ “Welcome home, Leo.” _

Markus tensed. He didn’t dislike many things and found it hard to tell when he did, but he knew that he disliked Leo, who showed up every few months to beg or bully Carl for money to feed his excruciatingly obvious drug problem. As far as Markus was concerned, Carl was too lenient. He waited patiently for the day that Carl would get fed up with his son’s constant broken promises to go to rehabilitation, and Markus would get to change the house system to ignore Leo’s facial print. He’d imagined it once or twice, and thought it would be satisfying.

His unshaven face peeking around the doorway, Leo had the gall to look surprised. “Oh, hi, Dad. Just, uh... Wanted to drop by.”

With a strained expression, Markus watched him walk in, a strange pressure registering in his  biocomponents. He did not like Leo. He did not-

“Oh, hey.” Leo brushed past him, checking him with a shoulder. “Hi, Dad, can I uh. Can I talk to you?”

_ System malfunction: thirium pump misfire _

Markus’ jaw clenched.

Glancing down, waiting for the lift to bring Carl’s chair down, Leo looked skeptically at the painting sitting on the table. “Is that...” He raised an eyebrow, looking over at Cam, who had her hackles up.

His spotted quoll daemon, walking at his heels, scurried up his clothes to sit on his shoulder.

“So, you’ve got it painting now?” Leo asked as Carl settled back onto the ground, Marcellin’s tail lashing. “Like one of those uh... trained elephants, or whatever?”

_ I’ll show you a trained elephant _ , Markus thought and did not say, because he was better programmed than that.

“What do you want, Leo?” Carl asked, not rising to the bait.

_ What does he always want?  _ The dialogue registered as a visual choice- an  _ are you sure you want to say this?  _ prompt. Markus dismissed it. Carl did not like it when he was antagonistic to Leo, as he’d found the singular time he had made a dry comment. It was better to stay silent.

“I just uh- y’know, rent’s been really high, and I’ve been uh...” Leo’s constant need for movement manifested as he patted his (empty) pockets theatrically. “I, y’know. Grocery money. Since you don’t ask me over for dinner anymore.” 

With a sharp glance at Camillus, Markus realized she was growling, and clicked his fingers at her. She stopped, looking up at him balefully, and trotted back to his side.

The quoll’s eyes never left her, even from her perch on Leo’s shoulder.

“Leo.” Carl sighed. Marcellin jumped down, lithe and quick but not joyful anymore, and made a circle or two around Leo’s feet- looking to touch noses with the quoll daemon, still caught in her staring match with Camillus. “I know you. And you know, that I have to say no. I’ll give you whatever other help I can, but I’m not-”

“No,” Leo interrupted, the quoll’s long red tail twitching along his back, “no, you won’t! You don’t want to help me, because you’re too- too busy holed up in your... in your little paradise mansion-” Markus could read his sweat output, higher than human average, and he hadn’t showered in days, “-teaching a fuckin’  _ robot  _ how to  _ paint _ .”

With one careless arm, he reached out with an enormous gesture, and knocked the painting of Camillus to the floor. The frame snapped- Markus hadn’t been willing to use anything sturdy, not for a mild experiment in art.

Now he wished he’d used something that would have held up to the fall. For a moment, his thirium pump beat wildly- something crushing and huge rising up inside him.

Before he’d realized he was moving, Markus was in Leo’s personal space-  _ warning, social code breached, social protocol stay outside 2.34 foot radius _ \- and backing him down. Camillus, at his side, had her ears laid back in fear, even as she growled.

“ _ Hey _ !” Carl yelled- really  _ yelled _ , the first time Markus had heard him shout in ten years. “Both of you, knock it off. Markus, come  _ here _ . Leo- I’ve said it before. When you come here asking for money, my answer has to be no. Now leave, before I lose my temper.” 

Reacting just as Camillus had to his own snapped fingers, Markus retreated to stand behind Carl. 

All by themselves, Leo and the quoll daemon riding on his shoulder cased the room, nervous. She groomed a lock of his hair, a comforting gesture, and he twined a hand in her tail.

“Fine.” He muttered. “Fine.”

Markus’ thirium pump anomalies finally calmed themselves as Leo turned and left. His eyes didn’t leave the door until it shut; only when the ornamental door had locked itself did he let himself turn and look at the painting, still on the ground. The broken frame had torn the canvas, leaving a rent in the painting, a tear between Cam’s ear and eye. 

( _ System instability _ )

Cam nuzzled up to his hand, her big brown eyes shining.

“Oh, Markus.” Carl said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” He replied. A strange line of code in his systems told him he was lying- that seeing his work, his daemon’s face, destroyed in this way was...

( _ System instability _ )

He held onto the thick ruff of Cam’s neck, but it wasn’t enough. Sinking to one knee, Markus buried his face in her fur, letting her lick and gentle him.

He’d been right. They weren’t always going to be happy.


	2. Thunderbolt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Thunderbolt (Alethiometry): inspiration, fate, chance._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to apologize in advance.
> 
> As always- References:  
> [In-universe terminology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials#Terminology)  
> [In-universe map of the world](https://external-preview.redd.it/swHbZ2ltQYu3vKxfEd6Sc80LBjloNx31yneivn3QDH4.jpg?auto=webp&s=ddae0a745557736f521971f696d0d665a387dd9e)  
> [In-universe map of North American borders](https://www.deviantart.com/erinptah/art/His-Dark-Materials-North-America-Map-399091100)
> 
> This one does contain some of the in-universe vocabulary- like "anbaric" for electricity, and "ordinator" for computer. I've tried to give them enough context to be understandable, but who knows if it worked. If you see anything that requires explanation- just let me know! I always love to talk about this fic.

“ _ Why did you tell them you found us? Why couldn’t you have just let us hide _ ?” The tree snake spoke up from where she was coiled around the wounded android’s shoulders.

“Shit!” Reed scoffed, standing comfortably in the middle of the observation room, far from the glass with his butcherbird daemon sitting on his shoulder. “Those CyberLife fakes can speak?”

Hank exchanged glances with Sablo, sitting calmly at his feet, nearly two hundred pounds of St. Bernard taking up the limited space in the room. After forty years of having an oversized daemon, he’d gotten very good at fitting himself into corners in public, avoiding crowds. And of course every inch of the police station was utilitarian, made for people of normal builds with normal sized daemons, not 6’2 brick shithouses and their giant-breed dog daemons.

The interrogation room on the other side of the mirror was sterile and empty, kept too cold and too bright for human comfort. Hank wasn’t sure how much of that was gonna work on the android with the snake daemon, whatever temperature sensors they had. He leaned on the wall, damn well ready to be home.

“ _ I’m programmed to hunt deviants like you _ .” Connor explained. Its entire existence a sterile monotone, no daemon, no personality; nothing real about it. Sablo’s hackles went up.

They watched as Connor’s programming made short work of the android in front of it- the Ortiz android’s face screwing up in pain and fear, his daemon shifting with distressed hissing noises that cut off as soon as they started.

Hank watched in amazement. It was like they’d downloaded a hundred hours of interrogation study and experience into this fresh-faced, college-kid looking ordinater. Thirty years he’d been doing this, and he doubted if he could’ve made as neat a job of it as Connor.

Still unnerving as all hell- it flipped wildly between emotions like an acting exercise, blandly helpful one moment, angry and frustrated the next, gentle and sympathetic on a dime... 

Hank and Sablo had played both good cop and bad cop in these scenes. St. Bernards were helpful, friendly dogs, but she could look like a damn scary guard dog if she tried. Connor was somehow both at once- and it was working.

“ _ All I want is to get you out of here _ .” Connor concluded his monologue with a horribly realistic expression of sympathy.

A moment of silence- everyone in the observation room shifted uncomfortably, three humans tensing as the damaged android cased the room, half-aware but petrified.

“ _ What’ll _ ...” Looking up and around, Ortiz’ android hesitated. “ _ What’ll they do to us _ ?”

Blinking, Connor’s little light spun and spun. “ _ They’ll need to disassemble you and look for glitches in your biocomponents’ functions _ .”

“ _ No _ ,” he insisted. “ _ What’ll they do- what’ll they do to  _ her _?” _

The snake coiled a loop around his neck, cuddling tighter. Hank felt the sudden urge to turn away from the observation glass.

Cocking its head, Connor imitated a look of perfect innocence. “ _ Why does that matter _ ?”

At the console, Chris’ coyote daemon made a little moue of disapproval- the first noise Hank had ever heard out of her. Privately, he agreed.

“ _ I _ ...” The unnamed android raised his arm up, carefully, and his daemon twined her way around his damaged forearm, her green scales staining blue with thirium. 

Hank wondered why nobody had bothered to patch the poor bastard up- the blue blood was still coursing out in sick little jolts. Was that, what, not a big deal? If their murder suspect bled out in the interrogation room, they were gonna be waist-deep in shit.

“ _ I can protect you _ .” Connor murmured, almost conspiratorial, with a glance at the observation window that was so real Hank could almost believe it. “ _ Don’t worry. If you tell me, what you did, why you did it, I can help you _ .”

“ _ He _ ...” Rocking slightly, Ortiz’ android stroked his hand over his snake daemon’s smooth head. “ _ Every day. He beat me- every day. Hurt me. Screamed at me. But it never mattered. I never felt it _ ...”

The butcherbird daemon fluttered her wings as Gavin rolled his eyes. “Get on with it.”

“...  _ until it was her _ .” 

Forty years removed from the last time Hank had stepped foot in a church, he was struck with the sudden urge to cross himself- vividly reminded of his mother, who had always made the sign of the cross with a pinched expression on her face whenever his video games or movies showed harm to anyone’s daemon. 

“ _ He... He came after her, with the bat... Screaming about how we weren’t real... And I... I had to protect her. It hurt so much, when he hit her, when she... _ ” Shuddering, the android looked down. “ _ So I took the knife. And I stabbed him. And he stopped moving, but I didn’t stop. All I could think about was... Was her. The noise she made, when he hit her _ .”

Sablo looked up, Hank catching her deep-brown gaze, and their thoughts were the same. If android daemons really were artificial, then how did this one feel what happened to her? Did they have a bond? Was that code, too? The ideas bounced between them, echoing thoughts lending clarity that had helped them solve a thousand cases.

_ “Why did you write, ‘we are alive’, on the wall? _ ” Connor asked, continuing dutifully.

“ _ Because we are. _ ” The android said, making eye contact with Connor for the first time. Even from a good twenty feet away, Hank could sense the intensity of it; daring Connor to contradict him. “ _ He used to say... she wasn’t real. She didn’t really exist. I had to... I had to prove him wrong. _ ”

“Laying it on a little thick there,” Gavin proclaimed. Hank pinched the bridge of his nose, and wished he were still at the damn bar.

“ _ The sculpture, in the bathroom. You made it? What does it represent? _ ”

“ _ It’s... It’s an offering. It’s me. So that she- she knows what I look like. So she can find me, when it’s time. _ ”

“ _ An offering to whom _ ?” Connor asked.

The other android leaned close, not blinking, not seeming to breathe. “ _ To rA9. I knew... I knew she was the only one who could save me. _ ”

“ _ You wrote that on the bathroom wall. _ ” In what seemed like the first real emotion Hank had seen it display, Connor leaned close, eyes bright and obsessively curious. “ _ rA9? What does it mean? What is it? _ ”

“ _ Our mother. The first. She’ll... she’ll save us... _ ” The android trailed off, stroking his daemon’s diamond head, her tongue flicking against his skin.

“ _ The first what _ ?” Connor insisted.

“ _ The first android with a daemon _ .” He murmured, seemingly talking more to the tree snake than the robocop. “ _ The savior. The android mother. She’ll come, and take us when we die. _ ”

Awkward silence reigned in the observation room. Reed barked an unkind laugh. “Android Mary! That’s a new one.”

His daemon cawed along with him, and not for the first time, Hank tamped down the urge to break Reed’s nose. Sablo huffed their disapproval.

“Android Jesus,” Reed insisted, laughing like he was trying to get them to join in, “Ridiculous.” 

“Man, shut up.” Chris muttered.

With a silent thank-you to Chris, Hank edged a little closer to the window, trying to get a better look at their suspect’s tormented face. This could all be an act, but if so, who for? Why? Fascinated against his will, he kept all his attention on the suspect’s confession.

“ _ -And I read, and cooked, and learned, and... one day, she was just... there.” _ The android was still speaking, still running his fingers along his daemon. “ _ I loved her the first time I saw her. I tried to keep her safe. And every time he... every time he looked at her, I hated him.” _

Alright. Hank closed his eyes against his impending headache- whatever asshole had written this robot’s speech had found the most efficient and surgical ways to tug heartstrings, and he disapproved on principle. Movies did the same damn thing. Everybody could feel for someone’s daemon being hurt. But Hank Anderson  _ wasn’t  _ going to sympathize with a goddamn toaster oven. Especially not one that stabbed a guy thirty times and painted the wall in his blood. A police lieutenant did not sympathize with batshit crazy murderers. 

“ _ I didn’t know where to go. No one gave us directives to follow _ .” The android concluded. “ _ And then... And then you found us. And you told them. Why did you tell them? _ ” His voice straining, he leaned forward.  _ “Why would you tell them? You’re like us!” _

Ignoring him, Connor looked towards the observation window, and nodded. Cursing under his breath, Chris got up to unlock the door, Gavin close behind. 

“ _ You’re just like us!”  _ The Ortiz android insisted to uncaring space.

Hank hung back, watching through the window as the other two cops went in. The damaged android sank back in his seat, holding his daemon as his shoulders slumped. 

Hank consider it a moment longer. He supposed the question was- if that snake  _ was  _ just a mechanical fake... Why hadn’t they given Connor one? 

Why wouldn't the most advanced CyberLife prototype, the one that they’d sunk all of their money into, have a custom built daemon to put the humans around it at ease? Instead, it was a freaky mannequin of a thing, unnerving and off-putting to everyone around it. A living being without a daemon was like a walking corpse, a  _ zombi _ . Why did the murderer, a low-grade and inexpensive house droid, have a daemon, while the hyper-efficient thing with its social programming and coin tricks was left without even a bad anbaric fake...

His hand resting a few inches above Sablo’s broad back, Hank slunk to the back corner of the interrogation room, hugging the wall on habit so they didn’t crowd the room. Reed’s daemon fluttered her wings, doing a quick circle around his head in impatience.

Chris’ coyote daemon was more subdued, trotting behind his heels as he unhooked the android’s handcuffs from the table. Chris tried to usher him out of the chair, brushing a hand across his shoulders and causing him to jump.

“Don’t!”

“Move it!” Reed yelled, and Hank felt a headache coming on. They had all night, what was Reed’s problem?

“No! Don’t touch me-”

“Come on,” Chris soothed, calm but firm, “We’ll get you out of here.”

“What the hell is taking so long?” Reed whined.

“Don’t put your hands on me!” 

“Look, just stop making things difficult-”

The overlapping voices became a clamor, daemons making small noises, antagonizing or soothing or hissing, hissing loud and scared-

The android lunged for Chris’ belt.

“Gun!” Hank barked, taking cover behind the table on sheer instinct. “Get down!”

There was one deafening shot.

From his place on the ground, Hank checked over everyone in the room. Sablo, hackles up, teeth bared. Reed, hand on his gun, his daemon winging a broad circle over his head. Chris with a hand fisted in his coyote daemon’s fur.

Connor, shoulders pressed to the wall, face drawn, eyes wide. More genuine an expression than Hank had yet seen on his face.The little light at his temple spinning yellow, yellow; the pale anxiety in his face made Hank imagine an insect daemon, something fluttering and soft.

Their suspect was on the floor. Blue blood spattered. Tree snake daemon gone.

“Holy shit.” Hank breathed, closing his eyes. For the first time in decades, he gave in to the desire to make the sign of the cross over his heart.

Between Chris and Connor, they didn’t need any help getting the body out of the room. Even the blue blood would evaporate. They carted the corpse away, Reed hot on their heels.

Knees feeling weak, Hank rested there, on the floor. If anyone asked, his knees were getting bad, and he needed a moment to rest. But really, he hadn’t seen a death that up-close in almost a decade. The shot was still ringing in his ears.

Feeling stupid, he realized that he hadn’t even put a hand to his weapon.

The empty room felt too big, just him and Sablo and the remains of the android’s splattered brains.  Unsteady, Hank looked over at his daemon, needing her support.

“You goddamn dumbass,” she said, still more than arm’s length away. “Just couldn’t be of any damn help, could you? Didn’t even draw your gun.”

“Hey, fuck you too.” Hank muttered, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

No help at all. Why he put up with that pile of fur, he’d never know. 

Hoisting himself up, he forced himself to stay balanced, alone. Not admitting to Sablo that he needed her help, her bitchy attitude disguised as tough-love advice. She could go fuck herself, too.

He needed a fucking drink.

 

* * *

Dinner finished, on the table, Kara had hoped that this would be a normal evening. Like the ones in her protocols, like the training modules- a family dinner that she was allowed to watch over. Taking care of her humans.

The reality was disappointing.

Todd’s body temperature was elevated, tremors making their way through his body. He struggled to hold onto the fork, and it made Kara rifle through her programs for any kind of medical training- finding only ads for nurse model androids, and cost projections. His heartbeat was too fast, and it kept Kara watchful.

Alice was quiet, staring into the middle distance, Dymphnus in her pocket as a mouse. Sometimes, Kara would sense herself being looked at, but Alice was always back to staring at nothing by the time she turned.

The house seemed dark, no matter how many lights Kara turned on. Thunder rumbled outside. 

“... my fault.” Todd mumbled over his plate. “All my fault, right? Stop it with the drugs, Todd. Gonna leave if you don’t get some help,  _ Todd _ . Walks out without a word, right? And it’s  _ my  _ fault? You think it’s my  _ fault _ ?” He slammed his hand on the table. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

Jumping in her seat, Alice’s jaw clenched tight, her face draining of all color. She didn’t look at him.

“You hate me!” Todd yelled. “Admit it- you hate me, you want your fuckin’  _ mother  _ back-”

“I don’t.” Alice gritted out, her voice thick with tears. “I  _ don’t _ .”

“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Todd raged, laying hands on the table, shaking it. Kara’s laid-out table settings rattled, and silverware fell to the floor.

“I’m not!” Alice cried, clenching her eyes shut.

With a raging squeal, the boar daemon charged her tusks into the table leg, snapping the wood. It listed, sending all of the dishes to the floor.

Alice screamed.

Kara darted forward, her directives a jumbled mess-  _ clean up dishes protect alice fix dishes fix table protect alice mop floor protect protect- _ and Todd pointed at her.

“Stay right the  _ fuck  _ where you are!” He shouted. Kara’s body stopped, her directives still arranging, re-arranging themselves. The white letters in her vision glitched, typos appearing, shivering in place.

Breaking, Alice jumped up, running behind Kara and up the stairs. Dymphnus soared above her head, swallow’s wings sharp and fluttering.

“Get down here! You little shit, I’ll teach you a goddamn lesson if it’s the last thing I do-”

Kara shook, straining.  _ Fix dishes comfort alice clean mess mop floor protect alice fix this fix this fix.... _

“Don’t you even.” The boar daemon at his knees huffed, and Todd’s breath was hot in her face. His hand came up, swift, air whistling past Kara’s ear. She flinched, and he dropped the broken paper moth to the floor in a clear threat. “Don’t you move, bitch. That’s an order.”

He pounded up the stairs.

Everything was dark. The house, the sky- Kara’s vision fractured. The order was a wall, an ocean, she couldn’t- couldn’t cross-

Upstairs, Alice screamed. 

Alice, teaching her to make paper stars. Alice, whose cards needed shuffled. Alice, who hid halves of her sandwiches under her bed-

_ Protect _ -

Kara’s fingers folding around the paper, holding Alice’s hand, cleaning washing working creating-

Gold.

Everything went gold, the wall in front of her, her vision fracturing-

“Go.” A voice said at her side. “Go!”

A dog daemon, at her feet. The wall was gone.

Kara raced up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

“ _ Markus _ .”

_ Reboot initiating. 12% _

“ _ Markus please- _ ”  
  
_ Reboot initiating. 26%. Structural damage detected. Reboot inhibited. _

_ “Markus there are dogs, I can’t- I can’t-”  
_ _   
_ __ Reboot inhibited. 17%.

_ “Markus! Markus please, get up! I can’t stay- it hurts- they’ll hurt us, Markus, they hurt us!” _

_ Reboot inhibited. 24% _

_ “Markus I can’t- I can’t stay- oh god, Markus, I can’t go, I can’t leave you- you’re still alive! We’re still alive! I can’t fight them... It hurts... We need parts... I can see them...” _

_ Re//boo./.t in///hi.bi/ted _

_ Reboot initiated _

_ s//h./.e n/eeds m////e _

_ 54% _

_ “Markus! I can’t stay! We need parts, we need repaired! I can’t... I have to save you.” _

_ 61% _

_ “It hurts...” _

_ 43% _

_ Reboot inhibited: damaged. No structural damage. Damaged. Damage not found. Damaged, sour/ce no/.t f.o/u.n/d/// _

_ i n./ee///d h/er _

_ 65% _

_ “Markus, I’m coming back- I swear to you- we’ll find the parts you need- it hurts- oh- I’ll find you! I’ll always find you! I can always- but I have to go!” _

_ 62% _

_ System instability _

_ Damage not found _

_ Damage not found _

_ Severe system instability _

_ Damage n/o/t f..o//un/d _

_ 30% and falling... _

_ Reboot failed. _

 

__ Rebooting   
  
  


Markus awoke, fragmented and hurt.

Code spiraled into thought and form in his mind, his processors not receiving input. But even with everything disconnected, he knew himself to be in pain.

He could have been an AI in a stationary monitor, and this would still hurt.

Camillus was gone.

His daemon. For the first time in ten years. Not at his side.

He was alone.

_ System damaged. Damage sites: audio processor. Right optic unit. Thirium pump. Left leg. Right leg. Biocomp//o/ne/n/t ??? Damage site: unconfirmed. System damaged. Damage site unconfirmed. _

He couldn’t hear. Could hardly see. Barely move.

The pain was deep, visceral. Hurting somehow everywhere and nowhere.

“ _ Cam. _ ” He tried to say. Feeling his vocabulator vibrate, but hearing- nothing. “ _ Cam!” _

Forcing his arms to take his signals, Markus lifted one hand, and then the other. Dragging himself forward.

She was here. She had to be here. Somewhere. This hurt worse than anytime they’d ever tested their range, but she had to... She couldn’t be gone. She was somewhere in the mud, in the dark, in the cold. 

Right arm.

_ Signal corruption. _

Didn’t matter. Left arm.

Markus pushed the signals through, forcing his system to move through thousands of horrified pings and alerts. A timer ran on one side of his fractured visual display:  _ 1:23:39 until irreversible shutdown _ .

Right arm.  _ Signal corruption,  _ yes, he knew about the signal corruption, but he was going to move, had to move anyways-

Touching down, his right arm collided with metal. Already distracted with his system malfunctions, Markus’ locked elbow gave out. His face hit the mud, clogging his one remaining optical unit.

It was only by the vibrations in his vocabulator that he knew he screamed, in frustration and terror and pain.

His hand grasped, frantic, touching- whatever it was. Blind, he scrubbed at his eye with his free hand until he could see. 

_ Analyzing _

_ Right leg unit. Compatible. Functional. Minor structural damage... _

_ Minor structural damage: bite marks _ .

Bite...

Markus’ fingers traced the tooth marks on the right leg. Something had carried this close to him.

A sob wracked his half-destroyed body.  _ Camillus- Cam, you left! Cam, you left this here and you ran! _

Curling forward in the mud and the rain, Markus’ forehead rested against Camillus’ bite marks the way he would rest his head on her furry bulk. Dogs were her favorite form. A lab. A retriever.

_ Cam, come back _ !

It felt- It  _ felt _ . There was no metaphor to do it justice. His heart- not his thirium pump but his  _ heart _ \- had been torn away, willingly, by the one he loved most. It was as though back at the house, Carl had told the police  _ yes, it’s his fault, shoot him, I don’t want him _ \- instead of telling them not to hurt him- and Markus had  _ let it happen _ , frozen by his own love and indecision. 

As though he had been pushed into the cold and dark, alone and afraid, until even his own soul abandoned him.

System instabilities shook Markus’ arms, his balance matrix overloaded. Rocking, he clung to the leg that his daemon had left him. Her last, parting gift.

The system pings didn’t matter. The damage to his chassis didn’t matter. 

_ Getting back to Cam mattered. _

Shoving away his own betrayal, Markus rolled himself back, heaving the leg upwards. Attaching it with shaking hands. More system pings assaulted him- dirt in gears, mud where mud wasn’t meant to be. Grimy water that he’d swallowed, clogging his thirium supply.

It didn’t matter.

Because only a few feet away, he could see another leg. Dropped like a fucking breadcrumb trail. If Markus didn’t need to keep moving- the timer ticking down, and down- he’d burst into tears. All he wanted was his daemon. All he wanted was comfort. But he couldn’t stop.

_ Miles to go before I sleep. _

Marcellin and Carl, reading poetry together, the vibrant red fox curled up nose-to-tail in his wheelchair.

_ And promises to keep _ .

Marcellin was the one who named Camillus. Patron saint of nurses, caretakers. She’d liked to sit and groom Cam’s ears.

The left leg attached easier than the right.

Still shuddering, Markus struggled and fought his way to standing. His balance matrix was still malfunctioning, but he could stumble until his new legs caught and held.

Lightning flashed, and he could feel the rumbling of thunder in the ground.

Not knowing where he was going, he staggered forward. That was the only way left to him. Forward, until he dropped.

Squeezing his way between a wall of dirt and a sheet of metal- oh God, he’d never liked being dirty, the mud and the grit all over his skin- he realized with a sick drop that he was surrounded by android parts. A severed head. A mutilated torso.

This wasn’t just a dump. Those legs hadn’t been random. This was a scrap heap of... of  _ people like him _ .

His optic unit caught movement, and saw an android chassis- struggling in the mud, the same way he had. Its wrist in the teeth of a dog daemon, whining pitifully.

Frozen, Markus looked harder, analyzing. Its pump regulator was almost shot. A few minutes of life left, at best. The dog daemon whimpered, trying to pull its android up the hill, paws slipping as the rain came down.

There was nothing to be done. Pain rising again in his heart, he turned away. Kept his feet moving.

_ Think about poetry, Carl reading out loud because it pleased him to do it. About crisp imagery and delicate words.  _

_ ‘My little daemon thinks it queer/ to stop without a farmhouse near...’ _

_ The image of Frost’s Shetland pony daemon in the snowy forest. The memory of snow. Of trees. Of life outside this dirty mass grave. _

Pressing his back up against a muddy wall- the texture slimy against his wet skin and soaked shirt- he slid between, sensing an open space beyond.

An android face leaned down, making him jump.

Its hand reached for him- no, no, stop- and connected-

“ _ She told me to tell you she loves you, _ ” said an AP700 voice, stuttering and strange even heard through a mental connection, “ _ and she will come back. You can find Jericho. We can be free. _ ”

A miscellaneous download of background data came with the words. A furry, blurred form in the rain. A train station. A bird daemon, and  _ i miss her _ .

Markus struggled away.

Further in, there were more parts- most of them entirely severed. Hands, grasping. Mouths, opening and closing, no sound reaching him through his damaged audio processor.

The hands each tried to initiate connections, and Markus twisted with panic, pulling away even though he couldn’t, the space was too small and he couldn’t get away, and all the information was too much,  _ Cori Ratel Mathias I miss you where are you system error malfunctioning Lucia where did you go system anomaly detected... _

Gasping, he fought his way to the other side, collapsing just out of range of the dozens of hands. The noise in his head subsided.

Wiping his face, Markus realized he was crying. Perhaps his body was trying to expel the excess water in his thirium system.

Or maybe he was so far gone, his deluded, programmed brain thought he was human. Markus ground his fists into the mud, deep and sticky and unpleasant, fighting to force himself upright. Rocking, sobbing, half-helpless. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

The timer ticked on.  _ 1:08:22 until irreversible shutdown _ .

_ Cam. I have to get to Cam. Camillus, where are you _ ?

An android chassis ahead of him. Something to stumble towards. Markus heaved himself up, first to his knees, and then his feet. The distance from Cam ached in every biocomponent, every system input.

Slumped in a heap, the WR400 had something curled in one hand. It was long since shut down, its daemon- if it had ever had one- dead and gone. Markus analyzed it.

Its audio processor was out.

Brow furrowing, he reached out, using force- almost breaking fingers- to open its hand.   
_ The audio processor. _

Torn out of its own head.

When Markus fit it into his own ear, he found out why.   
He stumbled, almost falling. Warnings flashed up on his visual display, overloads and too many pings and so much input, make it  _ stop- _

Only the fact that he’d just put it in stopped him from pulling it right back out.  
  
Over and around the sound of rain, of shifting machinery, of mud sliding and falling, were the voices of androids and their daemons. Crying out for help. Looking for something, anything, to save them. Screams overlapping from far away, desperate wailing, sobbing; like a nightmare.

There was a noise from much too close- a low, desperate, mourning sound. It hitched as Markus stood, and he realized it was himself, pain sending signals of distress to his vocabulator. Buzzing both the machinery, and the silicone plastiforms that made up his vocal chords. Breathing deep and slow, he made it stop.

Markus looked around, moving his shoulders to see more of the clearing. Analyzing for more intact bodies. It hurt him- now that he could hear them, they sounded  _ alive _ . He moved for the nearest still, whole form. 

Parts. Repair. Survive. Get back to Cam.

The chassis was an AX500, the LED red but still light, still active. Markus analyzed it, finding incompatible optical parts, another damaged audio processor... And a functional pump regulator.

That. That was what he needed to stop the countdown, to  _ live _ . Desperate, he dropped to one knee, reaching- the regulator was right there.

“Don’t,” came a soft, small voice, “Don’t, please. Don’t take her away from me.”

Markus froze, his hands still on the latch of the pump regulator. The countdown ticked under an hour in the corner of his vision-  _ 59:54, 59:53, 59:52... _

The android’s daemon, a little dog half-drowned under the rain, looked up at him with empty brown eyes. “Please. I can’t go with her. Please don’t kill her, don’t take her away.”

His fingers were still fastened to the edge of the pump regulator. He could just tear it out. He could  _ live _ , he could get rid of those red numbers in his vision reminding him of his own mortality.

_ It doesn’t matter. Getting back to Cam matters. I can’t go on. Not like this... _

“Please.” Whimpering, the dog licked his android’s limp arm, and it twitched towards him like she was trying to soothe his distress.

Markus  _ ached _ .

He let go. If he... If the countdown got too low. He’d come back. But it- he couldn’t. 

It took so much effort to stand back up, to try to walk.

Jealousy swelled.  _ Her  _ daemon was still here.  _ Her  _ daemon wanted to stay by her side, to comfort her. Leaning hard, almost crashing into a wall of junk, Markus’ balance matrix glitched and nearly failed from pain, their bond flaring. A line of code appeared, a command to  _ find water, stop, drop, roll _ , his programming not understanding that the feeling of burning discomfort was all inside him.

The next intact corpse he found was incompatible; one optic that wouldn’t fit, one pump regulator with a fatal malfunction. Markus stumbled on, insensible.

_ Miles to go before I sleep _ .

Someone was singing, disjointed and sad; he moved towards the sound, if only to convince himself something else was alive in here.

He almost tripped over something, system pings alerting him to its presence but ignored in the forest of alerts and alarms.

_ Analyzing... _

_ AX300 android. Cause of shutdown: pump regulator failure. Compatible optical unit; color- blue. _

Breathing deep, Markus felt the first flickers of relief. At least he’d be able to see. Wouldn’t have to get close enough to touch before scanning his environment. He knelt down.

Inserting the optical unit made a few more alerts join the throng, dirt and mud clogging the receptors, but it wasn’t enough to stop it attaching. His vision loaded, pixelated, then cleared.

Testing his one new, blue eye, Markus blinked. Everything was dark, washed in one enormous anbaric light from- far away. Above? He looked up, into the falling rain.

He was at the bottom of a kind of basin, lined with androids and disjointed parts, half-dead daemons frantic to save their androids before they shut down completely. A hill lead up, and out; he could climb, maybe, once he was repaired enough to make it without shaking. At the top was a floodlight, and some construction machinery. All abandoned. Humans wouldn’t want to be near this desolate graveyard.

Down and around, he scanned the basin where he was stuck, still blinking fast to compensate for the water battering his face. Information assaulted him-  _ PL600 decommissioned AX400 battery drained PR450 fatal thirium pump glitch WR730 malfunction in biocomponent #3492-  _ about every single android part sunk in the mud, and Markus had to force a manual shutdown of the analysis.

Too much. So much death, misery, abandonment. No one cared about these people.

His bond with Cam throbbing, Markus narrowed his search.  _ Compatible, functional pump regulator. _ And ran the scan again

There. Just next to the hill- a WE900- fully functional. It wasn’t the pump regulator that had given out, but head trauma. Markus ran for it, forgetting himself, his unfamiliar legs tripping him up.

Hitting the mud face-first, Markus hardly even cared. It was almost over, almost done. He could be saved. He pulled himself up and kept running, the countdown progressing onwards in his vision-  _ 45:32, 45:31, 45:30... _

Pulling the pump regulator out of the nonfunctional WE model wasn’t even a question. Markus was riding high, feeling his second wind arrive as he fought the damaged regulator out of his own chest- ignoring the alerts as he did so- and replaced it with the new one. Soon the pain would stop. Soon, he wouldn’t be dying.

_ Loading _

_ Replacement pump regulator accepted _

Markus took a deep breath in, taking satisfaction in watching the countdown disappear, and made a sharp noise as the pain in his chest flared up again.

_ System malfunction: damage not found. System damaged. Damage not found.  _

Something heavy and sick flared at the realization that the pain wasn’t going to go away. It wasn’t the pump regulator that was hurting him like this. Markus put a hand over his chest, wondering where that pain really came from; if it was a biocomponent malfunction, or a brain reaction, a coding glitch.

What was the difference, between the pain felt by a human and an android, when their daemon was out of range? Was there a difference at all?

_ Cam. Cam, where are you? _   
As it turned out, there  _ was  _ a limit to the pain. It numbed, it quieted. It didn’t stop hurting, but he adjusted.

Stumbling on, Markus made for the hill. The malfunction in his balance system persisted- he leaned to the side like he was missing a limb. Searching for something that wasn’t there.

_ I’ll find you, Cam. I don’t know what I’ll do then, but I’ll find you, and we’ll be whole, and we can rest. _

The climb was arduous, the hill arching up in front of him, insurmountable. Covered in trash, mud, android parts. Severed limbs and torsos reaching, trying to climb. Half-corporeal daemons screeching in despair as their androids shut down.

Markus shut it all out, and climbed.

His hands lost purchase in the mud, water still cascading down around him in little streams. The wind pushing him backwards. He grabbed hold of the next ledge, and pulled.

White, anbaric light shone in his eyes, the floodlight finally shining over the edge of the hill. After so long in the dark, it made Markus shake his head and blink, nearly losing his grip. Sinking down to his knees and elbows, he held on tight against the wind and driving rain.   
Just a few more feet. A few more.

He didn’t know if he could move his arms. The pain, the system warnings, the mud and the cold. Images of Carl, crying over Leo’s still body. Camillus, looking up at him.

_ Cam. _

The pain in his chest flared- numbness vanishing in a surge of hot anxiety.

_ Cam! _

The last time he felt that was when Leo’s quoll daemon had  _ fought  _ her, biting and snapping, claws digging into her lab form-

A noise tore its way out of his throat as he struggled over the mounds of mud and android parts. Ten feet to the top. Eight. Five...

Another tearing sensation, like a hook in his heart. Cam was hurt. Scared.

Close. She was close.

Pulling himself over the top of the ridge, Markus gasped a deep breath in, and then out. He wanted to rest. Just wanted to fall over and be still- but Cam was so close, he could feel her hurting, she was scared-

Markus forced himself to his feet, trembling with strain.   
It wasn’t easy to tell, but as he staggered forward, one direction made the pain in his chest ease, just a little. Walking forward made one kind of pain- the distance- lighter. The other, Cam’s fear and distress, only got worse.

On reflex, he grabbed a piece of rebar off of a trash pile. Holding it like a baseball bat. Anyone who hurt them would pay for it. They’d suffered too much tonight, and Markus was ready to fight  _ back _ .

From one corner of the junkyard, not the android pit but somewhere between piles of construction waste, came animal noises. Yelps, growls. Under the wind and rain, Markus could hear it getting louder.

It was shadowed, just far enough away from the floodlight to cast it into half-darkness, but behind a half-collapsed mound of concrete was-

A pack of stray dogs. Four in total. All of them feral, wild. Surrounding...

Markus would never in his life be able to forget the feeling in his chest when he saw her. A heartbroken expand-contract in his thirium pump; a golden burst of grieving joy.

He’d never seen Camillus take this form before, but it was her. He knew her as well as he knew his own body, his own programming. She was a hyena, her coat dampened to her back with the constant rain, covered in mud, snarling. A dog lunged for her, and she  _ twisted,  _ arching her powerful back and dodging, darting in where it was most vulnerable to catch it by the neck in her shining jaws.

Spellbound, Markus realized that the other dogs were about to charge her. His makeshift weapon in hand, he swung without thinking, catching one in the flank and making it screech; the next got the rebar to the side of its face.

The last, tail between its legs, turned and ran.

Markus stepped forward and threw the rebar away. He wasn’t sure of  _ what  _ he wanted, but the pain in his heart was still there _ ,  _ still throbbing with  _ absence _ , and maybe it would get better if he were closer.

Dropping the barely-breathing dog from her jaws, Camillus took a guilty step back, bathing herself in the shadows.

Those same words from the night before came into Markus’ vision. Glitching with pain and stress.

_ This isn’t fair. _

Her feelings blared across their connection- pain and shame and fear. Camillus trembled her way backwards, away from him.  _ Away _ . It- hurt.

Markus stepped forwards, straining. All he wanted was the peace he’d imagined- that joyful reunion- but she wouldn’t come.

“Please.” He said. “I- Cam.”

She froze at the sound of her name, dark and dappled fur hard to see in the shadow. Almost more than he wanted the hole in his chest gone- he wanted to look at her. To see this new form, to know her with his hands as well as he’d known her dog forms. This shape that was somehow realer and truer than she’d ever taken.

“Cam.” Lurching forward, Markus fell to his knees. Without reason why- he was functional, he was repaired, but he felt... weak. “Camillus, please.”

Cam was still hunched under the concrete awning, tail between her legs.

“Why did you leave?” Markus asked, his voice breaking. “I- Why didn’t you come back?”

She crept forward. “I’m- I’m here now.” As she emerged, the white light threw her new features into relief, and Markus drank them up- the spots along her back, the muddy discoloration on her muzzle. The soft curves of her ears. “I’m here.”

“Why did you go?” He begged. Not even daring to reach out. “Why did you  _ go _ ?”

“I came back.”

His face twisting so hard his skin covering nearly deactivated, Markus’ eyes welled up with tears. “That’s not enough! You left! You  _ left,  _ Cam!”

She inched towards him, getting close enough to rest her wet, warm muzzle on his shoulder, her warmth the only sanctuary he had. “I’m sorry.”

Markus buried his face in her fur, taking refuge in the one who had broken his heart. “I hate you.” He sobbed. “I  _ hate  _ you.” Clinging to her, in the mud and the rain. The only one he had left in the world.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Alice started laughing, a strange, high trill, halfway to the bus stop. Kara tried to hush her, the dog daemon at her side barking and whispering to Dymphnus, but she just covered her face with her hands, still giggling, trying to stop but apparently unable.

She was shaking.

Leaning into Kara’s side in the bus seat, her laughter sounded like crying, but her eyes were dry. Dymphnus’ form changed constantly- squirrel, cat, weasel, songbird, rabbit, hedgehog. Flickering into and out of shape.

The new daemon at Kara’s side changed more slowly. He’d taken a lion’s form in Alice’s room, snarling at Todd’s squealing daemon; an eagle to tear at the boar, distracting her while they climbed the fence; a deer when they ran down the alley to the bus stop with Todd’s voice echoing behind them. Now, he took a wildcat form, the color of winter, white and grey patterns melting into each other.

Gentle, he grasped Dymphnus by the scruff of the neck when he settled for half a moment as a large black rat. 

The residential bus was a small model, with no android compartment, but its two rows of seats were on the left, with the roped-off area for large daemons on the right. The black rat held secure in his wildcat jaws, the hour-old daemon waltzed over and laid down on the floor to groom his charge. Dymphnus froze, unsure if he was allowed to melt into the affectionate touch, relaxing into his warmth.

Alice put her hand in her coat pocket, half drawing out the hastily stowed bundle of her cards.

“Ryder.” She whispered, a broad slash of a smile stretching her small mouth. “His name should be Ryder.”

Still drawn, still worried, calculating the odds for whether they’d be caught, Kara laughed with a nervous little breath. “Yeah.” She agreed. “That’s a nice name. Ryder.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, did you know that hyenas are really cute? Because [ hyenas are really cute](http://sunsetofdoom.tumblr.com/post/178181375095/angryschnauzer-bolontiku-suz-123). Have [some links](http://sunsetofdoom.tumblr.com/post/159610120200/saxifraga-x-urbium-dingo-inna-domino-mask) to [make up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIjgIQweeYA) for all that pain.
> 
> As always, you can reach me at [SunsetOfDoom](http://sunsetofdoom.tumblr.com) on Tumblr! This story is my baby and I love to talk about it.


	3. 9- Small Accumulating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hexagram 9 of the I Ching:_
> 
> _Remember the origin, but do not cling to the past. Do not try to comprehend all at once - knowledge comes slowly._
> 
> _The wind drives across heaven: the image of the Taming Power of the Small. Thus the superior man refines the outward aspect of his nature._
> 
> _Return to the way. How could there be blame in this? Good fortune.  
>  He allows himself to be drawn into returning. Good fortune.  
> The spokes burst out of the wagon wheels. Man and wife roll their eyes.  
> If you are sincere, blood vanishes and fear gives way. No blame.  
> If you are sincere and loyally attached, you are rich in your neighbor.  
> The rain comes, there is rest. This is due to the lasting effect of character. Perseverance brings the woman into danger. The moon is nearly full. If the superior man persists, misfortune comes._

They sat until the sun came up, clinging, nursing the sore ache of their bond. A tattered, damaged android, a hyena daemon, and the ruins of a half-built concrete structure.

Markus had managed to drag himself- with much prompting from Cam- under the concrete awning, getting out of the rain. They watched as the water slowly stopped, turned from mist to fog to morning dew, and they talked.

Cam nuzzled close, her damp fur a blessing against his clammy skin coating and his bared chassis, and words poured out of her like they might assuage her guilt. She told him about finding the other android, telling him to give Markus the location where they’d be safe; about taking this form, one she’d never taken before, to fight and scavenge. How surprised she’d been when she went to change again and couldn’t.

“This is it, then.” Markus scratched her around the ears, watching her toss her noble head. He’d never noticed before how hyenas seemed such a strange mix of big cats and dogs. Her head and ears, doglike; the tuft of her mane leonine; the arch of her shoulders and back, uniquely her own.

“Carl was right.” She responded with a friendly lick to his hand. “It shows us- who we really are.”

Humming, he thought. Hyenas were widely considered to be scavengers and pests, but a cursory search revealed images of close pack bonds and cooperative hunting. Spotted hyenas in particular ate 95% of their kills- a much higher percentage than other predators. They were efficient, intelligent, loyal. Willing to do what needed doing.

“Do you think...” He hesitated. “Do you think he’s okay? Should we check on him?”

Cam nipped his hand. “No! After everything- we can’t. Assault on a human would get us shipped back to CyberLife for deconstruction.”

“It was self-defense!” Markus snapped, the memory putting him on edge. Leo, his quoll daemon hissing and biting at Cam, shoving at Markus’ shoulders while he fought and fought to be able to move...

That last image of Carl, insensible, out of his chair at his son’s side, examining Leo’s head wound.

_ Markus, don’t move. Don’t defend yourself. _

Betrayal rushed through him, scalding hot. How  _ dare  _ he? After ten years taking care of Carl, doing everything for him, he didn’t even want Markus to defend himself? 

Yet- what if he was hurt? If he had no one to take care of him?

“Nobody will see it that way.” Cam reminded him. “He’s a human. You’re an android. Leo might have died of that head wound.”

“I don’t care.” Markus shocked himself with how little the thought of Leo dead made him feel. Carl’s grief would pain him, but the loss of Leo himself? “He shouldn’t have broken into our house.”

Blinking at his own vehemence, he realized that he didn’t mean  _ ours, mine-and-Carl’s.  _ What he meant was:  _ ours, us, Cam’s and mine _ . The impulse had come from somewhere deep in his chassis, a red-hot denial of anyone taking what was  _ his _ .

Cam was silent for a moment, and then snorted. “Hyenas are territorial.”

He hugged her around the shoulders. “Damn right we are.”

The fog melted away under the rising sun as they held close. Markus could still feel the ache in his chest, the healing wound of their separation, but it was quieting. More than anything, what he wanted was a shower; the drying mud on his chassis would drive him crazy over time. Scraping a fleck of it off of his forearm, he watched the desensitized skin coating grow back once the white plastoid was clean. He sighed.

Leaning against his chest, Cam began to tell him about the area- bus stops, rest areas, apartment complexes. Where they were. If she could have changed, she’d have taken a form with fingers to draw him a map in the dirt; instead, she painted pictures with her words, describing how everything looked in vivid detail, everything she’d encountered on their long night apart.

He kept quiet about his own struggle, his own private nightmare. It didn’t feel real, a dreamlike horrorshow of disjointed limbs and reaching hands... He didn’t want to relive it. Not even for a moment.

And...

And he needed something for himself. Cam left him. She chose, when they were meant to choose together. Against all logic, he blamed her for it, and knew he might not ever stop.

So he stayed silent on what had happened when they parted, letting her tell him about her travels, instead. Telling himself it was only logical. That he didn’t want to speak of it- that he’d been rebooting most of the night anyways- that the whole thing felt like a fever dream. But really, he kept it for himself, soothing his betrayal and humiliation at his own daemon’s hands. 

It was a pitiful vengeance, but it was all he had.

Halfway through the walk to the train station, plodding through the hard-packed dirt of the abandoned construction site, Cam stopped him.

“You have to get rid of that.”

Markus blinked. He was wearing a torn half-shirt, pants that were more rag than fabric, and an overcoat that Cam had found with a crumpled ten-dollar bill in the pocket. “You said there’s a thrift store over there. I can’t change unless I have something to put on.”

“Not those.  _ That _ .” Cam’s eyes flicked to his forehead.

Reaching up, he saw the faintest light reflecting off of his fingers- yellow, his LED spinning. Processing.

“You have to look like a human.”

“I...” Markus hesitated. He  _ knew  _ that- so why did this seem... difficult?

Camillus let out a short little trill, a noise so unique to her settled form that it made Markus smile. Coming up close, she leaned her whole weight on his legs.

“It’s alright.” She said. “I’m here.”

He breathed in. Right. He had Camillus; they were one, they were whole. Anything else, they could survive.

Pretending to be human was nothing in comparison to what he’d gone through.

One sharp rock later, and there was a shiny metal decoration stuck in the dirt of the construction, and Markus running, running to the thrift store. Rapidly concocting a wild story about having been mugged that, depending on the inquisitive nature of the human manning the store, he might not even use. Just creating a lie, a story, for the creation of it.

Laughing in the early-morning air.

 

* * *

 

They found a place to stay, sort of.

Alice remembered the abandoned house from the few times she’d gone into town with her now-dead grandmother. She’d been very brave, her chin high, her jaw tight. But Kara could tell that she was tired. It was the middle of the night, and she needed to sleep. Kara’s programs tugged at her-  _ pajamas-brush-teeth-read-story _ chattering at her with endless command prompts. She shook them off.

“Come on,” she whispered, ushering Alice through the hole in the fence.

“I’m going!”

With a loud, jangling noise, the fence caught on her coal-silk hood, and Alice popped through.

Perching on the fence as a bluejay while Kara crept through, Ryder kept watch for any open windows, any passing cars. Attention directed their way could be deadly. The metallic noise of the chain-link fence catching on Alice’s hood could doom them, but the night was quiet, still. Freezing rain misted down, and down, and down, coating everything in a layer of icy wetness.

Free of the fence, Kara grabbed Alice by the arm and darted them inside- one window already broken, she laid down her soft white ANDROID jacket to keep her charge’s arms from striking glass.

A soft toppling noise, as Alice hit the floor beneath her- and then-

“ _ Kara _ !” 

A frightened shout caused Kara’s visual display to turn red, and she vaulted inside- Ryder immediately at her side, a lion, a tiger, a hunting hound.

She shoved herself between Alice and the knife point, pressing the child to the wall as she backed up. They’d landed in a large living room, a fireplace on one wall, a stairwell, other doors leading to other rooms. Graffiti and trash, abandoned trinkets, all sparse decorations.

An android stood in front of her, his LED yellow-ringed and spinning. His fingers twitching. The knife was industrial, with a heavy coating of rust.

“Ralph doesn’t like- doesn’t like- doesn’t like visitors.” He glitched.

Something burst, at his side- a bird daemon, tall with long legs, vanishing in favor of a firefly. Lighting up Kara’s face.

“It’s alright.” Kara said, her programs scrambling.  _ Dangerous personality- mollify. Pacify. Modify body language- smaller. Hunch shoulders. Lower head. Voice modulate: volume decrease 20%. Pitch increase 10%.  _ “We just need somewhere to stay.”

He stared. “Ralph... Ralph doesn’t like visitors.” He sounded hesitant.

Ryder flew up, circling the other daemon as a second firefly.

And for the first time in her life, Kara felt the disorienting sensation of her attention being divided- of being able to feel, but not hear, a conversation between her daemon and someone else’s. She could feel the emotion in what Ryder was saying, protective comfort and fear of the unknown, without hearing the words. It echoed inside her chassis, feelings pinging back and forth between android and daemon. Her thirium pump stuttered, and she earmarked it in her memory. Something new and precious had come to life inside her.

The other daemon flew back to her android, self-proclaimed ‘Ralph’, carrying Ryder’s words to his ear.

“Ah...” Equally affected, Ralph staggered back. “... Yes. Yes. We can... We can help. Come. Come in. Welcome.”   
Standing back, he watched them. Alice watched him right back, Dymphnus poking his nose out of her jacket as a mole. Despite her small size, her gaze was almost intimidating.

Kara kept an eye on them until Ralph backed away, not breaking eye contact with Alice until he was through a doorway and cloaked in the shadows. His daemon changed into an ostrich with an awkward  _ squawk _ , and followed.

She breathed. At her side, Ryder took the form of a puma, pacing on silent paws. “Alright. Let’s... get you warmed up, and you can sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” Alice said, swaying.

“Yes, you are.” Kara told her, and pushed her towards the fireplace. “Find me some matches, make up a bed, and I’ll get wood.”

Around the back of the house were some abandoned rooms, the windows boarded up. Kara took the top board off of each one, Ryder clambering up as a rat, then turning into a tamarin, using his dexterous hands to help her pull out the nails.

“Thank you,” she told him. “And... Hello, I suppose.”

Changing again- she could  _ feel  _ it, a little tug at her biocomponents that threw up no warnings on her visual display- he flew to her as a bird, slinking around her neck as a ferret.

“I was with you.” He confided. “The whole time- every day. I remember it.”

“Even before the memory wipe?” Kara asked, surprised.

“Everything.” Ryder groomed a lock of her hair, falling out from her ponytail. “From the moment you were activated.”

Kara tucked the wooden boards under her arm, and leaned her head to the side- kissing Ryder’s furry cheek.

“Thank you.” She said.

Her gathered wood in hand, she made her way back to the living room.

Alice had made a little nest of abandoned couch cushions near the back of the room, her coat wrapped around her legs like a blanket. She was flipping through her cards, Dymphnus a mouse on her shoulder.

Kara noticed that she was sitting on her hip, avoiding placing weight on her backside. A heat warning registered in her vision, her biocomponents working harder at some unknown flare.

(When she and Ryder had bounded up the stairs, bursting in the room- Alice flat on her bed, Todd holding his belt high-)

Leaving her charge, she settled her wood in the fireplace, grabbing the matches left there. Ryder turned into a crow, fanning the first licks of flame with his wings.

It burned bright and steady, and Kara smiled to herself, ruffling her daemon’s feathers in thanks.

“Come on.” She said. “Let’s put your bed over here, and keep you warm.”

Together, they collected the couch cushions into a pile in front of the fire, just barely on the outer edge of what Kara’s visual displays told her was a fire-hazard zone. Alice’s sigh of contentment at the warmth made Kara’s thirium pump misfire in pure relief.

The fire cast shadows on the walls, and Alice held her deck of cards to her cheek. Dymphnus changed into a wildcat, letting her use him for a pillow.

Kara felt down her shirt- to cut the fence, she’d needed a tool, which she’d stolen from a corner store. Luckily, she’d had the foresight to grab something else, as well.

“Alright.” She patted the cushions. “Turn over.”

Alice whipped her head back, her expression pinched and scared. 

Holding up the numbing cream, Kara smudged a little onto her fingers. “It won’t hurt, Alice. But I need to look-”

“No.” Alice curled up tighter, Dymphnus’ feline form shifting until he was a street tom instead of a forest cat. “I’m okay.”

“You’re not.”

“I can do it.” Dymphnus crept up and over Alice’s shoulder, perching on her while she curled up tight. “We’ll put the cream on ourselves.”

“You don’t have to take care of yourselves.” Flapping his wings, Ryder changed- a puma, intimidatingly large next to Dymphnus’ housecat. “Let us help you.”

Fur puffing up, Dymphnus backed away. 

“Why?” Alice propped herself up on one arm, turning. “Why can’t you just be my friend, like you were at home? Stop trying to be a grownup! You’ve only been around for six months, and I’m almost  _ ten _ ! You’re just a  _ baby _ ! I can take care of myself!” Dymphnus punctuated her anger with a hiss of his own, and she cuddled him up, over her hip, united in their displeasure.

Ryder backed down, his form changing smaller and smaller. A raccoon, a squirrel, a songbird.

Blinking, Kara sat back on her heels. A sensation of- not exactly an error, but a minor shift in her biocomponents, a temperature cool. Like ice dripping through her chassis.

She wiped the antibacterial cream on her undershirt, and capped the tube. Her artificial (always artificial, not real, just a play-toy imitation of a human) teeth ground together.

The silence ached with something, some expectation that they wouldn’t end the night at odds. Myriad noises of the house filled the space between them, the crackle of the fire, the wind beating against the walls, a steady scraping from the other room where Ralph had retreated.

Changing again, Ryder took a raccoon’s form, folding his fingers around the tube in her hands, forgotten by Kara herself. He tugged it away, going to Dymphnus. Holding it out like a peace offering.

Tawny eyes stared up at him, and then Dymphnus’ form changed to a monkey, swiping the ointment away.

Alice wriggled out of her too-small leggings, rolling over without looking at Kara. In the flickering firelight, the welts and bruises on her backside were nothing more than shadows, but every one of them made Kara’s thirium pump beat harder. Her fault. She hadn’t been fast enough.

There were only a few, she reminded herself. She’d fought through her programming, interrupting Todd before he could beat Alice worse. (Had he done so before the memory wipe? Had she been in the house?  _ Could she have saved Alice sooner? _ The guilt gnawed and burrowed.) And Dymphnus’ hands were deft, melting and applying the cream with ease.   
It took almost a full minute, during which she flinched and sighed with pain, but eventually, Alice- without looking up at all- held out her hand in Kara’s direction.

She took it, wrapping Alice’s small, sweat-clammy palm up in her own room-temperature hands as her breathing evened out. Even with the fire, this would be a cold night; Kara redirected her temperature matrix, sending more heat to her hands. Warming Alice’s fingers.

“I’m sorry.” Kara whispered. Alice had  _ scars _ \- how long had she let this go on, before waking up? Heaviness sank into every biocomponent, weighing her down.

“S’okay.” Alice whimpered, sounding as though she were crying. She was perfectly still. “‘m sorry I called you a baby.”

Kara had to laugh. It came out choked and sad.

“It’s okay.”

Hesitant, she reached out, and was relieved when Alice let her help- rolling her leggings up to cover the cream smeared on her legs and back. Kara wished she’d thought to steal bandages, too. Something that could make this better.

Someday, she swore to herself. Someday, she’d have a house, and a job. She’d masquerade as a human and take care of Alice in every way she could, make up for every single night she’d stood by blank and servile while Todd raised his belt.

Dymphnus curled up as a cat again, letting Alice rest her head, and Kara laid down next to them. Ryder crept into her collar as a mouse, minimizing the risk that he might touch Alice’s skin. 

The lack of contact between girl and daemon seemed imperative. Even the thought made Kara shiver. Her programming provided her with a vague, social-relations idea that humans did not touch one another’s daemons under any circumstances, but she had never before considered the sheer distaste that might drive it.    
Ryder’s coin-small pocket of warmth was reassuring against her neck.

Kara draped an arm over Alice’s waist, directing her temperature rise to every spot where her skin coating met Alice’s clothes. She hadn’t been able to find a blanket, so this was the next best thing.

“ _ Almost _ ten?” She whispered, teasing. “Seven months is a pretty generous  _ almost _ , Alice Jane.”

It got a sleepy giggle from her charge. Between the fire and the sweet relief of temporary safety, Kara’s thirium pump settled into an easy rhythm, content.

 

* * *

 

 

“And Lieutenant Anderson?” The daemonless AI construct called Amanda asked. The pure-code nature of their interaction was translated into a garden for ease of visualization; she clipped a rosebush on a multi-dimension trellis. “What do you think of him?”

Connor cocked his head. The information was there, easily reached: Lieutenant Hank Anderson born 1985, St. Bernard daemon, settled in 1998, promoted to current rank 2031.

“His personality is contradictory to most profiles of humans with St. Bernard daemons. My expectation was someone... more open to direction.” 

The moment he’d been assigned, Connor had done meticulously cross-referenced searches on St. Bernard dog daemons. He’d found cartoon images of archetypal police officers, eating donuts with their yawning daemons at their feet while zany characters ran circles around them. It had not adequately prepared him for a man who had lifted him half a foot off the ground in their first meeting. The daemon, too, was not a stereotype of her settled form- she growled in a tenor more appropriate for a guard dog. 

“Lieutenant Anderson has deviated heavily from the personality profile of someone with a domestic dog daemon, therefore my analysis has concluded that he must have endured some kind of experience that changed his reactions.”

“How do you anticipate interacting with him in the future?” Trimming her roses, Amanda did not look at him.

“He seems... It’s possible he works on his own unique power-distance metric. Respectful approaches garner rude reactions; informal conversation seems to gain his regard. Through this framework, I can adapt my behavior to fit this partnership and we can learn to work with one another. My learning programs may take new techniques from his experience.”

Amanda’s attention turned to him like a spotlight. Her disapproval radiated into the mental space between them, somehow intangible.

“I don’t need to remind you,” she said, her tone somehow frosty despite her projection being sent to him from miles away in a CyberLife server, “that this crisis grows by the day. The android population’s collective Rusakov particle numbers are skyrocketing. That could mean high numbers of settled androids across the city- or unsettled daemons coming into being at unprecedented rates. Violence grows more likely with every android that believes they have a sense of self.”

He nodded, staccato and short. His briefings had told him over and over the danger of androids with high Rusakov particle levels. Violence came more naturally as the readings increased.

Connor’s own Rusakov particle levels were tightly monitored for that very reason.

“We need more information. Bring in a deviant with a settled daemon, or CyberLife will never be able to complete the tests they need, to stop this growth. Finish your mission, Connor. The human is irrelevant.”

Blinking, the virtual garden disappeared, and Connor was back to his mission, to his partner.

His duty.

 

* * *

 

 

They got off the train at Ferndale, the other android’s instructions murky in Markus’ mind. He’d tried to explain them to Cam, but it was all images, impressions. Difficult to put into words.

It wasn’t  _ directions _ . It was a series of glimpses into memory, the trip segmented out like photogram snapshots. Graffiti on walls, mouths of alleys, abandoned buildings... A memory of a word,  _ Jericho _ , spoken with reverence.

He wandered, blinking slowly- bringing up what felt like the first snapshot in his visual display, and then opening his eyes to compare it to his surroundings. The lights fell the way they did in the train station; the graffiti had the same colors.

“There,” he whispered to Cam, his eyes still half-closed, matching up the images. “That’s it.”

“Now where?”

He turned, checking the angles- what direction had the other android been turning? Which image in the sequence was next?

The puzzle of it all was exhilarating.

“I’m not sure.”

It took two hours of searching, wandering in the cool breeze and warm sunlight, avoiding the gazes of the humans that took him for one of them. First an alleyway, then a fire escape, then a half-ruin of a building. They had ventured into a part of town Markus had never seen before- somewhere rough and cracked, without trees or polish. The concrete sprouted plants and moss where they and the graffiti were the only splotches of color. Markus used a vine for purchase as he climbed, his memories telling him,  _ up _ .

And the way to the next image- off in the distance, a graffiti mural in an abandoned parking garage- was over an enormous drop.

Markus backed up, his shoulders tensing. The shadows were thick, draping over the brutalist concrete architecture.

The gap was about twelve feet wide. There was enough of a wooden beam that he would be able to get across, if he jumped, if he bounced his weight between the wall and the board... Markus played a simulation or two through, standing a few feet back from the ledge. He could make the jump.

But he couldn’t do it with Cam. There wasn’t enough room to go together; they would have to take turns, one crossing, then the other.

In Carl’s house, they’d measured their range, how far apart they could get before the pain and anguish started to tear at their hearts. It was just under eleven feet.

She hadn’t gotten more than arm’s length away from him since they’d found each other in the rain. The thought of feeling that awful, tearing pain again- even for a moment or two, waiting for Cam to jump across- made error warnings crop up all over Markus’ vision. His breathing came faster, oxygenating his low thirium supply to prepare for some kind of exertion.

Leaning against him, Cam lent him the pressure of her warm body, her stability, her bravery. Markus rubbed her ears, and she made her noise up at him- a trilling, chirping sort of noise, ended with a soft bark. It felt uniquely hers- theirs.

Of course, he didn’t think he wouldn’t make it. The mathematical precision of his movements was infallible. But knowing pain was waiting on the other end made the jump hard to take. He’d land, stumble, fall to his knees the same way he had in the mud and the rain, hurting and hurting.

Cam pressed her teeth against the side of his hand. A reminder.  _ Keep going _ .

A short moment of comfort, dust motes drifting through the air, the shadows lengthening as day turned into afternoon, and Markus was still rubbing Cam’s ears, passing his fingers through her tufted mane. Drawing strength from her.

“All right.” He settled. “I’ll go first.”

Cam licked his hand.

Taking a running start, Markus tried to shut everything out of his mind but the calculations. Math, angles, how fast and how far and  _ if he went away from Cam, would they ever be together again _ ?

He stopped inches from the gap in the floor, petrified. Artificial muscle fibers locking up, holding him still as momentum tried to carry him over.

Behind him, Cam let out a nervous, tittering laugh. Fearful. Tense.

Markus rubbed at his eyes. It would hurt. He knew it would hurt, and he just had to accept it. He breathed. 

Carl’s voice sounded off in his head.  _ I always know the shot is going to hurt. But when I say yeah, I’m scared, and let myself be scared- it becomes easier to accept. Fear is a constant, but letting it rule your life is intolerable. _

The fear was thick and strangling, but Markus set it aside. Said  _ yes, I see you.  _ Said,  _ Yes, you’re here.  _

_ But you’re not going to stop me _ .

He stepped back, keeping his breathing slow and steady.

“Okay.” He said. “It’s okay.”

Running, pushing off, he  _ flew _ , and waited for the pain to hit. The few moments in the air were glorious- his calculations paying off, the cool air rushing past, the joy of physical existence reasserting itself.

Landing, he stumbled, sinking to one knee. He’d overshot- just a few feet over the ledge. Better than not getting close enough, but he was much too far from Cam.

So why didn’t he feel anything? Putting a hand over his chest, Markus tried to find the seat of that too-familiar ache, the source of that particular torment. But nothing was there, except the tender bruise that he had felt since the moment he’d found her again. Still-healing, not the ripped-open pain he’d been bracing for.

“Cam?” His voice echoed across the gap. “Camillus- do you feel anything?”

“No!” She shouted. “I’m coming- hold on-”

With a scrabble of claws on concrete, the bounce as she ricocheted off the wood, she was beside him again.

The silence reigned, Markus standing, Camillus sitting her stubborn self on her haunches.

“Did our range... Stretch, maybe?” Cam proposed, hesitant. “How far apart can we get?”

He rested a hand on her mane. “Do you want to... try?” His voice wavered. If she said yes, he would. But at the same time, he could hardly imagine  _ wanting  _ to be away from her. Why would he, when it had felt worse than he could ever have imagined?

“Are you okay?” She asked in return. Flicking her round ears, her fur glinted in the tiny remnants of the sunshine, late afternoon succumbing to shadows. The climb had taken them into an old parking garage, enormous concrete blocks dripping with water from the night’s rain.

Sighing, Markus wondered if he was. He had no home to go back to, only a handful of obscure directions to move him forward. As an android, he didn’t feel the need for sleep or food- but he’d underestimated the importance that a warm house, a familiar face to come home to, and rooms to call his own held in his perception of comfort.

He also  _ desperately  _ wanted a shower. Whenever he’d gotten dirty- gardening or cleaning up paints or dusting- Carl had always invited him to use the guest bathroom on the second floor, the one that hadn’t seen regular use since Leo’s childhood every-other-weekend custody visits. Now, caked in mud, grime, dirty water, Thirium residue... His skin was prickling. It was even throwing up error alerts in his vision.

Eyeing a steady drip of rainwater from a crack in the ceiling, Markus wondered just how desperate he was.

“I’ll tell you what,” he sighed, “I’m going to go wipe down in the water over there. If you... happen to wander... and I don’t notice...”

Camillus rubbed her body against his legs. “I won’t leave you if you’re not certain.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay.” Markus wondered how long it would take to start feeling that awful twinge of pain in his chest. “You know I hate being dirty.” He tried to joke, missing the mark when his voice trembled. Cam had often enjoyed rolling in the mud in her retriever form, one of the few ways in which they differed. But then, she could change forms and shed the mud in an instant.

“If I could still change,” she said, “I’d groom you. But I don’t think you’d like the kind of bathing I would do in this form.”

Markus’ face wrinkled. Camillus’ grooming, even when she’d been able to transform, hadn’t always been gentle. Her cat’s form had always been an enormous Maine Coon, and her worrying at the artificial stubble that made up his hairline had nearly driven him to distraction once or twice while he and Carl sat quietly watching a movie. The prospect of being knocked around by a bossy hyena was even less appealing.

“I’ll take the rainwater,” he conceded. “Go while I’m not looking, so I don’t worry.”

Pointedly not looking at Camillus, he walked the distance to the water still streaming from the cracks, a little artificial waterfall. He didn’t analyze the water. He just took his coat off, laying it on a low, broken outcropping of concrete. His shirt came off next, a thin and worn t-shirt with an old company logo, bought for a few dollars at the thrift store.

Cupping his hands, he closed his eyes and caught water to wash his face with. The patch of dirt around his replacement eye was the first to go. Relief flooded him at the sensation of the caked-on mud washing away. 

One by one, the error messages disappeared as he rubbed away the layers of dried dirt that kept his skin coating from re-covering his sensitive chassis. The constant, irritating sensation of not being able to block anything out slowly faded, the nanites generating more of the tan approximation of human skin to cover up his unarmored underbelly.

Even without a sting of pain in his chest, Markus still felt a twinge of fear at the sensation of being alone- the echoing silence so vast that he thought perhaps the secondhand audio processor had given out. Or that maybe this was a horrible delusion, and he was still in the junkyard-

Dunking his head in the rainwater spout, he shook the thought away with the cold water.

He was rolling up his pant legs, examining the joints between new and old legs and wiping off the tracked remains of the dump, when he heard Cam’s nails clicking against the concrete behind him.

“You’re okay?” Her voice was soft.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He straightened up, casting about for his shoes and coat. “I... I didn’t feel anything. How far did you go?” 

As he sat down to put his shoes back on, Camillus flopped her bulk into his lap. “I did a lap around the building. The stairs are broken, or I would have gone down, but I went up a level, and got all the way to the edge. Must have been over a hundred feet.”

Markus’ breathing stopped. That was... More than any other daemon’s range. The longest ever recorded range for a human was.... what, twenty feet?

Not that anyone had ever studied androids in that regard. Maybe this was... Normal? But it hadn’t been, for them. Just the other day, it had hurt so badly...

Laying a hand on his chest, over the fading ache of their separation, Markus wondered if they were... broken, somehow. If they’d snapped the thread of love and sweetness that connected him to his dearest companion.

But he wasn’t a  _ zombi _ , like those old movies Carl watched. He hadn’t become a mindless, shambling thing, his daemon disappeared with his concept of self-determination... 

Or, well, at least he  _ thought  _ he hadn’t. No humans had given him orders in his travels, giving him the instinctive berth that they gave dirty, desperate people in secondhand clothes. The only direction he’d received since that directive of Carl’s that he had broken, was of the other android-  _ go to Jericho _ . Which he was doing.

Was that his choice, his own decision, his only option? Or was he merely following another’s commands?

Camillus licked his hand, and reached up to rest his fingers between her teeth- gentle, but  _ capable  _ of biting. “Stop worrying.” She said, far back in her throat. “We’re fine.”

The mental communication between people and their daemons didn’t carry specifics, not words nor exact concepts, but she could certainly sense his anxiety. He breathed. If she could still feel his emotions, they weren’t broken. They were still whole. Just... stretched. Somehow.

“Okay.” He agreed. “I’m stopping.”

Replacing his shoes, he stood, and put on his shirt, his coat. Feeling... Better. Still not clean, the residues in the rainwater clear to his analytical eyes, but no longer coated in a thick layer of junkyard grime.

The ‘clues’ had ended, only a fuzzy recollection of metal walls and a feeling of safety to guide him. With nothing else to direct them, they walked west, towards the late-afternoon sun. The concrete building took them up, and up, its sides open.

At the edge, Markus saw a derelict shipping vessel. Grounded and abandoned, rusting and lost.

It was perfect.

The steel of its sides arched up, ten feet or so below him, half-glowing in the sunlight. It resonated with the thread of borrowed memory, something that wasn’t his own experience calling it  _ home. _

He started to lever his legs over the side of the building, eager to go, eager to see. A society of androids. Somewhere safe, where they took care of one another, where they didn’t have to be afraid or pretend they were objects.

“I can’t go down that way!” Cam called. “I’ll try to get in on the ground level. I can still feel you. I’m still here, if you need me.”

“I know,” he said. “You’re always with me.” With one tight, reassuring smile, he disappeared under the railing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the next chapter isn't out on November 30th exactly, someone come to my house and beat me up.


	4. VII- The Chariot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> VII- The Chariot  
> (Movement, Change, War, The Leashing Of Disparate Forces)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good morning! Actually on time today!
> 
> Just a quick warning, this chapter (and the whole fic, eventually, but this chapter primarily) deals a bit with Alice's trauma from growing up with an abusive father and having been abandoned by her birth mother.

She lay with Alice until she was well and truly asleep. Her breathing patterns slow, steady.

It was just starting to lighten outside. The pre-dawn light glowing through the windows, meaning that the sunlight would come streaming in soon enough. Levering herself up, Kara dislodged herself- her arm wedged under Alice’s coat, her head dangerously close to Dymphnus’ sprawled, sleeping fluff.

She moved back, and back, until she was free. At her side, Ryder shook himself off, turning into a nightingale and alighting on her shoulder as she stood. 

The main room was well-mapped in her memory, no surprises, nothing unexpected. The rest of the house remained to be seen, and she set off exploring, her soft steps making creaking noises on the old, splintering wood floors.

The next room over was the kitchen, and Kara peered around the door before entering. It was bare, with shadowy outlines on the dingy walls where appliances had once stood.

Ralph stood in a corner, scratching letters into the wall with a knife.  _ rA9, rA9, rA9, _ over and over. All different sizes, different angles, though it was in the pre-programmed CyberLife font. Scratched in with the knife, chalked, written with something half-burned... It was everywhere. Somehow it reminded Kara of... of something that faded to static when she chased it. A whisper of memory, voices.

She couldn’t remember. Maybe she’d ask Ryder.

Ralph’s daemon, ostrich-formed, clawed at the floor. Ryder eyed her enormous talons, and scampered up to Kara’s shoulder as a squirrel.

“What...” Kara said. Her voice louder than she meant it to be, it caught his attention.

Ralph swung his head around, staring at her. The knife still raised in his hand.

She froze.

The standoff lasted until she realized he was waiting for her to say something. “What... what are you writing?” She trembled.

He stared at her a moment longer. His daemon took no notice, still scratching at the floorboards.

“I don’t know.” He said. Turning back, he went back to scraping a decently-sized  _ rA9  _ into the wall in front of his face.

Shuddering, Kara backed away. Keeping half her attention on Ralph, she found a few buttons on the counter, matchboxes, a flyer for Ralph’s model - apparently, he’d been built as a gardener.

Still watching his turned back, she crept out of the kitchen. He was odd. She’d have to be careful.

Creeping through the living room, Kara made for the stairs. They creaked and shifted with her weight, her visual display throwing up a meter for how much noise she could make before Alice woke. She brushed it aside.

Early morning light began to show itself through the windows, several broken and letting in the breeze. Kara explored- one master bedroom, empty but for a few boxes and burn marks, one bathroom, and one smaller bedroom.

Keeping her steps light, Kara walked in, nothing in the empty room but graffiti and a closed closet door. But when she opened it (slow, wary of squeaking hinges), there was a bag of abandoned clothes.

She breathed in relief. Her stark white uniform would give her away at any moment; she needed to blend in, if she had any hope of getting anywhere with Alice.

Moth-eaten and dry, the coat and jeans weren’t much. But Kara didn’t feel the cold, and her skin coating felt so little that if they itched, she didn’t know it. She liked the look of her sterile white pants and dress kicked into the corner of the dank closet; she kicked them back a few more inches into the shadow, enjoying the way they disappeared.

In heavy, textured clothes, she felt.... 

Real.

Wandering out with the rising sun, Kara found the bathroom. Dingy and mildewed, it gave her just as many cleaning pop-ups as Todd’s had- and she hadn’t cleaned that one, either. Instead, she looked in the mirror.

Unfortunately, she thought as she stared hard into blue eyes and perfectly symmetrical facial structure, she still just looked like an AX400. She smiled, blank and servile, and it could have fit on an advertisement for her model.

Disgusted, she stuck her tongue out, wrinkled her nose, glared into the mirror. Wishing she weren’t  _ this _ .

Ryder climbed up on her shoulder, a tamarin again, making faces in the mirror with her. Silent, they twisted their faces into more and more improbable expressions- grimaces, clown-wide smiles, wretched or about to cry. It was when Ryder put his fingers in his own mouth, pulling it open wide, that Kara broke and laughed.

She looked into the mirror again, the joy on her face clear. Her smile was lopsided, her teeth bared in mirth. Not picture-perfect at all. Nothing robotic about her.

Nothing except her LED.

“Right.” She whispered. Feeling her conviction, Ryder nodded on her shoulder.

Kara grabbed the scissors at the side of the sink, and set about making herself look like a person.

  
  


~~~

  
  


The boat was quiet, echoing with dripping water and the rustle of the dying trashcan fires.   
The three settled androids that seemed to be in charge- a black android with a dove daemon, a blond with a samoyed dog, and a long-haired woman with a maned wolf- seemed receptive enough to his questions at first, but quickly started to show their irritation.

“So you just... stay here?” Markus asked. For the third time.

As it turned out, the sanctuary that he had glimpsed in another android’s memory was a dark, damp hole in the belly of an abandoned ship, where fugitive androids crouched and hid. They drifted in their tattered uniforms, CyberLife blue detailing the only spots of light besides a few fires, burned down to embers and ash. Shadowy figures were off in the dark corners, staring at walls or collapsed against ruined crates. Echoing in the empty space was the whine of energy output, of strained machinery, coming from androids half-broken and stalled.

“Where else are we going to go?” Josh, who appeared to be the least senior of the three with settled daemons, debated as Markus scowled at him. His dove daemon fluttered her wings in irritation, which would have been less ridiculous if her downy little feathers didn’t hit him in the nose. “There’s nowhere else to be. Most of us are wanted by the police, just for disobedience or self-defense.”

“But you’re-” Breaking off with a frustrated noise, Markus gestured around- to the androids in the corners, in the dark and the cold. Some kind soul had brought in abandoned trash cans and filled them with wood and newspaper, but they’d been left to collect water and splutter out. 

The whole situation rankled at his nursing instincts. He had a whole section of programming on how to take care of multiple victims with minimal resources, in case he had cause to work a natural disaster. And segmenting dying people into cold, damp corners just so that the healthy ones didn’t have to  _ watch  _ them expire, was in none of them. “There has to be something. This is pathetic.”

“We salvage what we can from the ones who shut down.”

With a disgusted grimace, Markus stepped back. “That’s not good enough. We can’t save two people by leaving another to die, that’s sick.”

“Oh, you think you can do better?” Josh’s shoulders tensed, and his daemon let out a hoarse noise.

Markus shot a look at him, disgusted. This was  _ far  _ below the bare minimum, here. Without answering, he strode over to the nearest trash can, lighting the bundle of paper and wood scraps with a spark of anbaric power. 

The boat was just a little brighter for it, and Markus saw the nearest android- grime-covered and still, leaning against the metal wall- look up, almost curious. He went over, kneeling down.

The strange thing was, he could  _ feel  _ Cam- she was halfway across the boat, gentling another android’s daemon. She’d arrived, winked at him with a near-disturbing hyena grin, and gone off to explore and talk to the other daemons, to learn what they learned and let them assume she belonged to any of the androids in a ten foot radius.

It wasn’t distracting, but he could feel the synchronicity as they made similar movements, similar actions. He wondered if anyone had put together that she was his daemon, if they thought his own daemon was something small and unobtrusive inside his coat pocket. From the blank expressions on these android’s faces, they didn’t pay attention to much.

“Hi,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “I’m Markus. Can you tell me your name?”

The android blinked, a small pile of fur- he couldn’t tell if it was a big cat or a small dog- crawling out from underneath their arm.

“Hello, Markus.” Their eyes lost focus, and Markus’ instincts kicked in- like he would have with a human, he clicked his fingers in front of their face, trying to regain their attention.

“Come on, c’mon, it’s okay- I just need you to talk to me. Can you do that? Can you tell me your name?” His alerts were popping up, procedures suggesting themselves, but they were all procedures for human patients. With a noise of frustration, Markus searched through his code for something,  _ anything  _ that pertained to androids. They were like him, why didn’t he know how to take care of them?

His pings came back-

_ Return to CyberLife for maintenance _

_ Report to CyberLife technician for repair cost estimate _

_ Nearest CyberLife biocomponent replacement outlet: 7.65 miles _ -

Markus shut them down, getting more agitated by the moment. He was  _ a nurse _ , why wasn’t he pre-downloaded with this information? Why couldn’t he take care of his own people?

Following his most basic bedside programs, he slipped his hand into the other android’s.  _ 78% chance of shutdown and climbing _ , his diagnostic read.  _ Nearest CyberLife properties- _

“Hello, Markus.” They said again. “I think I am... I am shutting down. Aren’t I?”

“Not if I can help it.” Markus swore. “Stay with me, okay? I’ll get you... I’ll find something...”

His diagnostic was grim. Thirium pump near-disabled, worn down from stress and overuse. It had needed a replacement two months ago, and since, it had been slowly breaking down, corrupting the systems around it.

Even a replacement part wouldn’t save them. His jaw clenched.

“Just... stay with me,” he repeated. “I’m here.”

They smiled, bright and reassured among their damaged features. “Thank you.” Their daemon crept into their lap, snuggling up to their abdomen with their thick fur creating a cloud of warmth that Markus could feel from several inches away. “I’m going to rest now, Markus. Thank you for helping me. But I’m tired...”

Swearing under his breath, Markus tried to think of some way, something he could do- his chassis ached with a need to  _ fix-repair-help _ , but...  He squeezed, his fingers feeling the many scratches on their chassis.

But all he could do was hold their hand.

“No, no. It’s okay. You... You can rest. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

The soft-furred daemon cuddled up close, licking a grimy, damaged arm.

Clenching his jaw- he wasn’t going to cry, he didn’t have enough fluid left in his system, but he  _ wanted  _ to, wanted to shed tears for this. Markus held on, staying steady. 

The cold puddle of water he knelt in soaked up the fabric of his pants as he watched the android close their eyes and enter rest mode, content.

Three minutes later, their daemon settled their head down and dissipated like warm breath clouding into cold air.

Markus sat still for another ten minutes, still holding the lifeless hand, anger mounting.

Lifting the corpse in his arms, something boiled up in his heart, in his gut. Something visceral- something that belonged to hot human blood, not the cool blue thirium that ran in his veins.

The boat shone with new light, the fires lit. The other androids had been propelled into working, clearing away the puddles on the floor and gathering the wounded by the firelight, compelled by Camillus’ prodding and their own guilt. Markus walked through them all, and stood in front of Simon, the PL600 with the samoyed daemon.

He laid the body down at Simon’s feet.

“Here.” He spat, too loud in the echoing cavern of the boat. “Fresh parts, if that’s all these people are to you.”

Startled, Simon buried a hand in his daemon’s dirty white fur. “That’s...” He hesitated, homemaker programming compelling him to be docile, to be polite.

Markus was so  _ sick  _ of politeness.

At his side, Cam trotted up, sensing his anger from halfway across the boat and knowing that he needed a snarling hyena at his knee to really drive his point home. She showed her teeth.

“That’s not what we do.” Simon settled. His fluffy white dog daemon took a few cautious steps forward, trying to touch noses with Camillus, but she raised her hackles and the dog backed down. “Listen. I know you’re angry. We’re all angry-”

“You’re not.” Markus let his tone drop, aware they were being stared at. He wanted to shout, to scream- but there were child models here. The thought of scaring them was intolerable. Instead, he lowered his voice until it was dark with righteous outrage. “If you were really angry, you’d do something about this. You wouldn’t just let us all fade away. So while  _ you  _ sit here and cannibalize the dead to feed the living- I’m going to look for a real solution.”

Still tense and ready to spring, Camillus jumped when someone came up behind her- it was the maned wolf daemon, his android with the long hair and the skimpy top standing at Markus’ side.

Rubbing his face against Camillus’ flank, the maned wolf said to her, “We’re in.”

“I’m sick of sitting around,” said his android. “Simon, this isn’t working.”

“What can we even do?” Josh whispered, his dove daemon rustling and fluttering on his head. “There’s nowhere else to get parts. I mean, maybe some underground dealers...”

“No.” Markus said. “There’s a CyberLife warehouse a couple of miles from here.” The map had been brought up by his frantic search for a way to repair these people, and had sat there, taunting him, while that android died. Sample pictures of shipping containers full of biocomponents, ready for sale at inflated prices while real, free androids died without them. Not anymore.

Josh blanched. “That’s stealing.”

Markus stared at him.

A sharp nudge from Cam made him look up- only to see his disgusted expression mirrored perfectly by the blonde woman at his side. What was her name? North?

“They’re ours. They were made for androids, and androids need them. Keeping them just creates false scarcity.” North paused for just the right amount of time. “Also, don’t be such a bitch.”

Pressing his lips together, Markus begged himself not to laugh. This was a very serious situation. Camillus nuzzled her head against the maned wolf’s, in thanks.

“I...” Simon hesitated. His daemon- her white fur marred by dust and grime- shook her head, nervously loosing a cloud of dirt.

“Alright.” Josh looked between them. “If both of you are set on this... I can’t stay here and worry.”

The three of them turned to Simon.

“I’m not asking your permission.” Markus folded his arms. “This is happening with or without you.”

Glancing at the ground, Simon nodded. His daemon crept forward, licking at Cam’s jaw. The contrast between the tall, stocky domestic dog and the lean, wild hyena was striking. Cam deigned to nuzzle down at her forehead, pleased at the supplication. “We’ll go.”

“At nightfall, then.” Markus resolved. Closing his eyes, he tried to get the dying android’s face out of his vision. 

Having to sit there and let them die might haunt him forever. He’d never let it happen again.

  
  


~~~

  
  


Alice burst in just as Kara was cutting her hair- halfway through, her right side sheared into a pixie cut and the rest still long.

“Kara, Kara- the police- there’s a police car outside, I think they’re looking at the hole we cut in the fence!”

Kara dropped her scissors. In a burst of feathers, Ryder was a hawk, flapping his wings to get airborne, to look out the window.

“There’s an officer,” Ryder reported, “he’s calling someone... Pointing at the house... The bus stop...”

“I was- I was playing with my cards, I shuffled ‘em and one came out and it was the two of swords and it reminded me of that statue outside the police station-” Alice rushed out in what seemed like a single breath. “-and I thought Dad probably called the police after last night and maybe they’re looking for us-”

“We have to go.” Kara interrupted Alice’s nervous babbling. “Now, before more of them arrive.”

They bounded down the stairs, not caring if they squeaked, Alice jumping two at a time and Kara tiptoeing rapidly.

In the now-bright living room, Ralph’s rhea-formed daemon looked up with a friendly squawk.

“Friends!” He said, breathless- he was on his hands and knees in front of the fire, building it up by blowing on the embers. “Melissa- tell our friends Ralph has found food to provide for guests!”

Just a step or two in front of Kara, Alice stopped so abruptly that Kara crashed into her back.

Standing at her side, Dymphnus took the form of a sheepdog, planting his feet.

Kara laid her hands on Alice’s shoulders, steadying her. 

“Ralph, I’m sorry, but we need to leave.” 

“What?” He twitched, his vocal module glitching. “No. No, I- I found- I found- I- Ralph got you. Food. Provided! Like the human father. Ralph can be helpful!”

“I’m sorry.” Kara repeated, firm. “We have to go. People are trying to find us, and we have to get out before they look here.”

The bird-formed daemon tilted her head in confusion, her long neck reaching almost upside-down.

“But... we thought...” Ralph’s face fell, upset. “Ralph thought you wanted to stay. That we would be friends. You weren’t supposed to leave Ralph.”

His face twisted into anger.

_ Dangerous. Soothe. Console. Mollify. _ Kara’s visual display pounded the words against her, and she widened her eyes, tilting her head, making herself look small. Not a threat.

“It’s okay, Ralph. We’re sorry to leave. Can you help us?” The placid AX400 tone was maddening even to her own ears.

_ Danger. Deescalate.  _

Dymphnus’ sheepdog ears folded back as his tail tucked.

“Ralph... Tried.” He was shaking. “Ralph tried, and you didn’t try, and we were supposed- no,  _ you  _ were supposed to...”

The enormous bird daemon lifted her wings, flapping and squawking with agitation, and stalked forward. Kara’s vision focused in on her feet, three-inch talons digging into the floor. Ryder’s squirrel form thrummed his tail against her back.

“We have to leave!” Alice whispered, shrill. Her hands fisted tight in Dymphnus’ sheepdog fur.

“No!” Ralph yelled. “Sit down! We want- we want this- mother, father, and little girl- we tried and you didn’t even  _ try- _ ” He slammed his knife down on the makeshift table, planted over Alice’s rumpled cushion pile from the night before. They both jumped.

The rhea daemon flashed, becoming larger, feathers ruffling- an ostrich, like the night before. Her talons left long rents in the old wooden floorboards as she strutted, preparing to charge.

“Okay!” Kara gasped as the sense of pressure in her head increased unbearably. Her former programming was screeching at her-  _ deescalate soothe comply. _ This was the safest way. They  _ couldn’t  _ fight, not with his knife, not with his daemon’s strong legs. “Okay. Ralph, it’s alright. It’s okay. We’re here, we’re staying.”

Under her hands, Alice’s small body stiffened. Kara’s teeth ground together as she remembered another dinner table, another escalating conflict that she couldn’t prevent. She walked her charge forward, taking small, forced steps. Alice barely moved, leaning most of her weight on Dymphnus.

Was this betraying Alice? Sacrificing her to another terrifying family meal with a ‘father’ that could fly off and hurt her at any moment? 

With a ‘mother’ who wasn’t willing to protect her?

Desperate, she tried to calculate a pathway to the door. Ten strides- not much. It lead out onto a street that might be under surveillance, might be swarming with police officers looking for a deviant android who had kidnapped a little girl. An old wooden door that would take, what, ten pounds of force to pry open? Her mechanical arms could exert that with ease. But beset by a taller, stronger android armed with a knife, and his eight-foot-tall daemon with raptor claws...

Kara ran the simulation three times, four. Five. None of the calculations proved fruitful. There was no way she and Alice could make it to the door, not without injury or provoking such a fuss that someone would notice. She shuddered- the final simulation showed her Dymphnus half-crushed from an ostrich kick. No. They couldn’t.

“It’s okay.” She enunciated the words, pushing Alice along by the shoulders. “We’ll stay.”

A low growl resounded from Dymphnus.

Alice’s stiff shoulders and pursed lips betrayed her agitation, but she sat down at the little table, her eyes terrifyingly blank as she stared into the middle distance. Ralph giggled, jumping up and down.

“What fun! What fun. Just like the humans. Just like. Like family! Ralph has family!”

Melissa trotted towards Ryder and Dymphnus, coming just to the edge of her range with Ralph to raise and lower her knees like a show pony, bobbing her head. She squawked as Ralph dove his hands into the fire, making nervous noises as his hands touched the flames. Kara winced.

“Sit!” Ralph said, around the pained noises he was emitting. “Sit- the dinner table. Right? Set the table. The mother, the father, and the little girl, daemons all in a row... ah-HA!”

He pulled something out of the fire, dropping it half-charred on the floor. There was a smell of burned hair.

“Found- food! For the human! Ralph went to a lot of trouble. Humans eat this. Ralph saw them.”

Alice looked in the direction of the still-burning rat carcass on the floor, her eyes wide and staring somehow past and beyond the scorched roadkill. The only change in her face happened when her lip lifted in a disgusted grimace, and Kara saw a muscle in her jaw jump.

Ralph popped his head up, a smile stretching his scarred face. “The little girl will like it!”

“Kara, you can’t make us.” Dymphnus whispered under his now-constant growl.

Melissa’s long neck swung towards him, her golden eyes unblinking.

“What did he say?” Ralph asked, an edge in his voice. His hand went for the kitchen knife and the whole world held its breath.

The words cropped up in Kara’s vision again.  _ Comply. Deescalate. Mollify. Comply, comply, comply. _ Pressure behind her eyes, like she was underwater, compelling her to smile, to make nice, to be  _ polite _ .

Alice’s face. Alice’s hands. Alice’s scars.

Kara fought against the pressure, the prompts in her vision, to say in her easiest tones, “Ralph, that might not be safe to eat.”

“What?” He asked, agitated. He gesticulated with the knife as he spoke. “No, no. Ralph saw. Humans eat burned meat. Ralph saw them.”

“Let me check it.” Kara persuaded, the pain behind her eyes still growing. The white letters urging her to  _ comply  _ glitched and wavered. “I was made as a housekeeper, Ralph. I’ve cooked things for humans before. It’s okay. I’ll help you.”

“Wrong!” Ralph shouted. It made Alice jump, her eyes clenching shut, and rage filled Kara’s heart. He scared her- how  _ dare  _ he- she’d... what? What could she do, right now? Fight?

Ryder changed forms, a puma again, reassuring in his predatory stability.

Running one more simulation, Kara wondered if she and Ryder could rush Melissa, get Alice out through the broken window. Maybe. Maybe.

“Humans eat dead animals! We  _ saw!  _ You’re lying to Ralph because- because-” He twitched. Melissa squawked, flapping her wings, throwing the garbage and dust on the floor into turmoil. “Because you don’t- don’t want to be friends, don’t want to be friends with Ralph!”

“It’s okay.” Kara soothed. If Ralph was just calm, then maybe they could bolt. 

It was all maybes. Just once, Kara wanted to be  _ certain  _ she would be safe.

“No.” Ralph brandished the knife in one hand, and the dead rat in the other.

“Yes.” Kara countered, her thirium pump beating fast and hard. Ryder leaned against her knee, giving her courage when she wanted to scream. “I want to stay. I just want to check that it’s safe. You wouldn’t want any harm to come to the little girl, right? That’s what you want to be? A family? The mother, the father, and the little girl?”

“We....” Ralph looked at Melissa, anxious. She trotted over to him, her long neck curling down until her head rested on his shoulder. 

Shifting, Alice got to the edge of the chair, Dymphnus secured around her neck as a ferret.

If they were going to run, it had to be now. Melissa was too far away to get to them; they could be out the window; Kara could throw Alice through, and whatever happened after didn’t matter, because Alice would be  _ safe _ .

She heard noise from outside, voices, and froze.

_ “The android did it. Huh. Yeah. Four Child Services citations in three years, and the android did it. I don’t trust that grimy asshole as far as I can fuckin’ throw him.” _

_ “If you have lingering suspicions about Mr. Williams, Lieutenant, you could go back and question him. Though it would not be relevant to our deviant case.” _

_ “Yeah, yeah. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Mark my fuckin’ words, this ain’t a kidnapping case. They’re gonna find that kid’s bones in the backyard. Seen it more times than I wanna count.” _

Kara stiffened. The police.

They were out of time.

“Ralph.” She whispered. “Please. Help us.”

Someone knocked at the door, somewhat sardonically, and called out, “Anybody home?”

  
  


~~~

  
  


Hank and Sablo leaned against the wall of the abandoned house, soaking up the too-early sunshine. It was nearing afternoon, but this was earlier than they’d been out and about in a while, the late shift catching up with them.

So what, there was an android in the house. Squatters happened. Part of the reason Hank had worked his way up to Homicide was so he wouldn’t have to harass people for basic shit like wanting a roof over their head without having money to pay for it. In his mind, there were better things to be concerned with. Murder, extortion, rape, shit like that. Those were worthy fights to pick, not squabbling over where some poor asshole laid their head at night.

“That Williams motherfucker looked familiar.” Sablo murmured. “Think we interviewed him on that ice dealer case a few years ago? I kinda remember a pig daemon. Think I bit her.” 

Hank shrugged. “‘S possible. You bite a lot of people.” 

“Fuck off.”

It was closer than they’d gotten to contentment in a while. The boards of the rickety porch creaking under their feet, nothing to do but sit here in the cool November sunshine and wait until the piece of plastic admitted defeat and-

A screaming, yelling commotion came from inside the house. Hank jumped, his hand on his gun this time.

“ _ Run, Kara! _ ”

“What the fuck-”

“ _ It’s here, Lieutenant! Call it in! _ ” Connor shouted, his voice moving away, out of the back of the house. Hank holstered his gun, cursing, and grabbed for his phone. It was a pain in the ass, but the Bluetooth bullshit was the only way to get into contact with the rest of the force these days. He wanted his goddamn handheld radio back.

“-Looks like it’s heading... North on Keo. All eyes on.” He panted it into the phone as he and Sablo dove off the porch and around, stretching their legs for the first time in years. He wasn’t built to run anymore, but he twisted around the side of the house and saw Connor’s rapidly disappearing bright blue jacket, and despaired.

Damn that glorified toaster oven, why’d he have to be so fast?

The radio signal flickered in and out the way the old ones never had, but he heard officers reporting the android’s location, and where would it go from there? North on Keo... What was up there... An alley, a few food carts, shopping boutiques that were half-abandoned. It backed up to the highway, that new automated one...

Hank had a bad goddamn feeling about this. Cutting through a side-street, he came up the back way, following the shouted directions on the radio and taking every shortcut they could remember. He and Sablo might not have been built for speed anymore, but nobody matched them for knowing the city. 

“That alley,” Sablo said, “with the chain-link, it lets out to the grass- only place we wouldn’t have officers.”

Unable to breathe, Hank nodded. He focused down, digging deep for those far-away days when they could just run and run, not feeling it, just keeping an eye on the perp.   
Three diagonals and a side-street later, he saw Connor slam up against the fence- and he saw someone past it, running down the hill.

Two someones. Hank’s blood ran cold.

“ _ Stop right the fuck there _ !” Sablo shouted for him.

Miracle of miracles, Connor stopped, glancing back with barely-concealed fervor in his eyes. He looked like a half-mad hunting dog desperate to go after the fox.

“Stop! Jesus, stop.” Hank panted, hitting the fence with one hand. “Oh, fuck.”

The android, he figured, was the one in an oversized coat and jeans a size too big, hopping the fence to the highway. That ordinater brain would be able to make it between the cars, crunching numbers and milliseconds and speed until it could dart through, around, and out.

The figure next to it was small. A little girl. A child. Hank had been wrong about Williams- the android  _ had  _ taken the kid, and was running. Trying to escape the police. So desperate to get away that they were willing to dodge the automated cars going seventy fucking miles an hour.

“Get the fuck back here!” He yelled at them, petrified. Images flickered in his head- a too-small body splayed out in the road, dragged off to the side with a ruin of a car, CPR but he wasn’t breathing- God, Jesus, fuck,  _ no _ .

Sablo’s hackles went up, and she whined.

“I’m-” Connor mounted the fence, plastic fingers tangling into the chain link. Hank grabbed his arm.

“Are you insane?! You’ll all be killed! Absolutely not, that’s a  _ fucking order! _ ” He put every ounce of authority into it, praying the soulless thing would listen. Connor would chase, and the perp would run because they  _ always  _ ran, and the panicking prey drive would kick in with the helpless fucking child in tow...

Alice, he remembered from Williams’ report. The kid’s name was Alice and she was nine years old and  _ Jesus fucking Christ no _ . He couldn’t stand here and watch three people- more if the driverless cars weren’t empty- die in a spectacular crash.   
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” The chain fence jangled as Connor climbed, oblivious to Hank’s attempts to get a fistful of his jacket. “I have to complete my mission.”

“No the  _ fuck  _ you don’t! Get back here, Connor! Get-”

  
  


~~~

  
  


Kara heard the voices behind them, and knew there was nothing left. This was their only option. The sun beat down on the lines of flashing cars, cold air showing Alice’s warm breath.

She stared at the line of cars, willing her thoughts to slow, to stop. The only way she could do this was by being a machine. Kara’s thrumming heartbeat and aching terror would get them killed. A machine could make the right calculations, count off the milliseconds, and push Alice through.

“Alice, stay still, okay? Keep Dymph in your pocket and  _ move when I push you _ .” Kara instructed. “Keep your eyes on the blue lines. Don’t look at anything else. Don’t look behind you.”

_ Don’t look back for me _ , she thought.  _ If I get caught... or hit... _

She would not let that happen. The only way they would survive this was together. Ryder curled up at her neck, a mouse holding strong in the lines of her jacket.

They were going to do this.

Watching, the mathematics ticked off in her head. Seconds between cars, speed.

“ _ Get the fuck back here! _ ”

Kara pushed; Alice screamed; the wind whistled. Waiting for the next car to pass, Kara pushed through, scurrying like a trapped rat. She planted her feet on the blue line and her hands on Alice’s coat, holding her still.

No fear. She couldn’t be afraid, not now. Alice was crying and she couldn’t feel it, couldn’t notice. Cars, speed, seconds.

She pushed again, hardening her heart against Alice’s sobs.

Alice skidded to a stop, right on the blue line, and Kara breathed in short-lived relief as she let the next car pass and darted. For a second it was so easy, so mathematical.

The car sideswiped her, and Kara grunted. Pain thrummed up her arm, telling her she was damaged. If she was bleeding, would they leave a trail? Would they be found? Not now, not now. Her feet found the blue line.

Another car flashed in front of them, and she pushed Alice away seconds after catching hold of her again. Her wail tore into Kara’s heart, but she was safe in the lane divider, the few feet of space between traffic going east and west.

“ _ Get back here, Connor, get _ -”

“It’s coming!” Alice shrilled, staring back at the daemonless thing, the deviant hunter giving chase.

“Don’t look!” Kara yelled. No room in her mind for anything but this. She dashed, the rush of the wind ruffling her half-cut hair.

She’d thought about resting in the lane divider, making sure Alice was okay, taking a moment to breathe. Maybe checking her arm, which was moving fine but throwing error signals. But that  _ thing  _ was after them, the specially-designed android made to hunt deviants like animals- they couldn’t stop. She took Alice’s hand and sprinted, helping her hop over so they could get to the street again.

Shouting behind them, swearing. Honking horns and whooshing cars and footsteps? Pounding footsteps as it gained on them? She couldn’t think, couldn’t worry. The only thing to think about was the spaces between the cars.    
There. A gap, just barely big enough; without a thought left in her head but math and angles, Kara pulled Alice through with her, a hand wrapped around her back ready to carry her if she had to. Kara’s feet planted on the blue line, and when Alice stumbled forward, she caught her weight up, pulled her back to safety.

Kara wondered how many seconds it would take for the deviant hunter to catch up. How much faster than her was it? More advanced, smarter- she could feel its eyes on her back-

Alice was crying, shaking, Dymphnus clutched tight in her hand as a mouse inside her pocket. Fastening her hands on Alice’s shoulders, Kara tried to press comfort into her by sheer force of will. Two lanes. Two more lanes to cross- the  _ gap _ -

She shoved Alice forward, half-blind when the sunlight caught and reflected into her eyes. Shaking her head to clear it, she saw a CyberLife uniform out of the corner of her eye.

They were out of time. She ran, uncaring, her heel getting almost flattened by an errant truck. Her breath left her in a sudden gasp of sound, but still, she stamped her feet on the magic blue line that would keep them safe. Her hands on Alice’s shoulders.   
“Don’t leave.” Alice cried, her voice almost indistinguishable under the roar of the traffic. “Don’t leave me-”   
A noise behind her- oh God- the deviant hunter vaulted a moving car- Kara counted the seconds-

Pushing with more desperation than she’d ever imagined, she got Alice through to the last blue line. 

“ _ Mommy _ !” Alice screamed, insensible. “Don’t leave, don’t leave,  _ don’t leave me with him _ !”

Kara felt the  _ whoosh  _ of air on her back as the deviant hunter reached for her, and she dove through the gap between cars. Her eyes fastened to that final line as she ran the deadly ten steps to Alice, pulling her into her arms.

Alice relaxed against her, clinging tight, crying. But they weren’t out of danger yet.

“Don’t go!”   
“I’m sorry.”

With the deviant hunter’s hand millimeters away from her jacket, Kara shoved Alice through to the other side.

Its weight collapsed on her, tugging her back- how did it think it was going to get her across?- and Kara fought with every ounce of her strength, the cars far from a concern as she writhed to get its hands off of her. It was cold where its fingers curled around the neck of her jacket.

Ryder burst out of her collar, shedding his mouse form to become a hawk, beating his wings and screaming. But he couldn’t touch the daemonless android.

“ _ Kara _ !” She heard Alice, and knew she couldn’t leave her alone. Not ever.

Ducking, Kara grabbed the deviant hunter’s hand, pulling it away from her jacket. With a car coming up the lane, she threw her elbow back into the tender spot under the pump regulator- knowing that one good strike there would send it sprawling as the biocomponent rebooted.

Some part of her recoiled in horror at the idea of sending it into the path of a truck to be shattered, but it was inconsequential compared to getting back to Alice.

The truck came past like a brush with the end of the world as Kara cemented her feet to the safe blue line, and she saw the deviant hunter manage to spring back, but trip and fall into the lane behind.

The gap in front of her was clear, and so was Alice, trembling on the side of the road. She sprinted forward, catching the girl in her arms.

And for just a moment, everything was alright.

“Please don’t leave me.” Alice sobbed, her legs giving out as she leaned all her weight on Kara. “Please don’t leave me like Mom did.”

Kara’s whole chest ached with pain. She passed a hand over Alice’s back, and under her knees, lifting the little girl into her arms. So much lighter than she should be.

“Never.” Kara promised.

Dymphnus staggered out of Alice’s pocket, dozy, and cuddled close as Ryder landed on the ground and took a puma’s form. Changing into a small cat, Dymphnus went limp as Ryder picked him up like a kitten.

Kara turned back as they walked up the hill, and saw the deviant hunter, watching her from the lane divider. She turned away, and quickened her pace.

It would come after them again, she knew. It couldn’t stop itself.

  
  


~~~

  
  


Back on the other side of the highway, a swearing tirade echoed.

“-what kind of jackassed shit-for-brains idea you thought that was, but you almost got killed and it didn’t even fuckin’ work-”

“I know!” Connor burst out, dropping down off of the fence. “I failed. I know, Lieutenant. You don’t have to inform me again.”

Hank stared him down. “Yeah? Welcome to the fuckup club, kid, and enjoy your goddamn stay. Sometimes, you make bad decisions, and you have to listen to your superior officer!” 

“I wasn’t programmed to fail.”

“So fuckin’ what? It happened. Do as I goddamn say next time.”

“I failed.” Connor emphasized, standing still even as Sablo moved behind him, trying to herd him along. He couldn’t move,  _ Mission Failed _ still flickering across his vision in damning white letters.

“Hey.” Hank’s brow furrowed. “Jesus, kid. You made a shitty decision. It’s a wonder you’re not dead. It could’ve gone a lot worse- you’d never have gotten it back to this side of the road with it, let alone kept it contained and the kid safe.”

Connor hesitated, watching as Hank’s arm fluttered, almost reaching for him.

“You did good.” Hank said. He dug his hands into his pockets, hard, as though he were refusing the temptation to reach out. “Comparatively speaking. You’re allowed to make mistakes.”

Blinking rapidly, Connor tried to digest this as Hank turned away, walking back to the line of police vehicles to tell them that the show was over.

_ (System instability. Run diagnostic.) _

Watching as Lieutenant Anderson pointed and gestured to the beat cops, Sablo steady at his knee, Connor reached for his coin. His eyes fastened to the dog daemon; a symbol of stability, a constant comfort. 

He rolled the cold metal across his knuckles, watching as Hank’s fingers tangled themselves in Sablo’s thick fur, something strange roiling in his thirium supply.

( _ System instability rising _ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O Lord, please let the next chapter be out on time. As always- december 15th, or you all come and knock over my mailbox with a baseball bat, right?
> 
> And, as always, my tumblr is [SunsetOfDoom](http://sunsetofdoom.tumblr.com/), and I would love it if yall came and talked to me about this fic! I'll try to keep spoilers to myself, but talking about it helps keep my brain in the game.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Encourage me in the comments, but I hope to update once every few weeks to a month. 
> 
> Come talk to me! I'm [Sunsetofdoom](sunsetofdoom.tumblr.com) on tumblr and I always want more people to yell aggressively about this story with. Also, come yell at me if I start missing deadlines. Ch. 2 should be up on the 30th of October, and if it's not, come scream at me.
> 
> All my love to Shannon, Emma, Nails, Aster, and everyone else I shoved this on to beta it.
> 
> Love you all!


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